


Hand in Hand

by TheBookwormBakery



Series: mom said it's my turn on the keyblade [2]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Maleficent is a bad person (shocker), Manipulation, [marge simpson voice] I just think Kairi's neat, aka one day i asked "what if kairi ends up in traverse town with sora?", and my friend replied "holy shit", and then i decided to rewrite all of kingdom hearts, chapter count is a ROUGH estimate, depending on how the chapters divide out, nomura won't drink his respecting kairi juice so i guess i have to do it myself, sorry riku
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2019-07-30 00:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 46,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16275758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookwormBakery/pseuds/TheBookwormBakery
Summary: Here is what should have happened, the night Destiny Islands was lost to darkness:Riku, desperate for the knowledge of what lies beyond the horizon and the strength to reach it, opened a door, rejecting a power that arrived too late to change his course.Sora, searching for his friends, took up that power in Riku’s stead and began to write his own destiny.Kairi, so close and so far from them both, hid her heart in the safest place she could think of, and in doing so inadvertently helped to deepen a new divide between her friends.Here is what happened instead:Riku, curious and driven, still opened a door and walked out into the darkness.Sora, loyal and brash, still picked up a key and tirelessly fought battles never meant to be his.But Kairi, intuitive and brave, takes Sora’s hand instead of giving him her heart.And the two of them are thrown out into the stars together.





	1. The Keyblade's Chosen Wielder(s)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of a storm, two children chosen by a legendary weapon wake up in a new place where they only thing they know is each other. Kairi chases a dog. Sora hits some monsters really hard. Donald and Goofy get two heroes for the price of one.

At first Kairi thinks maybe she fell out of bed while she was asleep, because her head is throbbing and she’s lying on something cold and hard.

Then something licks her face, and all at once she remembers the storm, and those things attacking, and falling upward into darkness, and reaching out for -

“Sora!” she gasps, shooting upright and startling the creature responsible for the licking. It’s a large dog with golden-yellow fur, dark floppy ears and a whiplike tail, and she relaxes ever so slightly with the knowledge that she’s not in immediate danger. “Hi there, doggie,” she says softly. “Do you know where we are?”

The dog huffs in her face, tilts its head, and runs off. Kairi lurches to her feet. “Hey! Wait for me!”

She’s a lot slower than the dog is, and quickly loses track of it in a twisting maze of alleyways. She pauses to catch her breath and get her bearings, looking up at the walls around her and the starry night sky. It kind of reminds her of the center of town back home, except she’s getting a bad feeling from the shadowy corners. It’s the same bad feeling she had before the storm, where her stomach felt heavy and weightless at the same time and she felt like she was going to be sick.

She really needs to find Sora. Or a weapon. Maybe a weapon first - she has a feeling those monsters have followed her here, and remembers how they seemed to zero in on her and Sora. She doesn’t like the odds of finding him before they show up.

The alleys twist and turn into each other, making Kairi lose her bearings more than once. Eventually, though, she steps out into the open, seeing a plaza with two central lampposts and little shops on all sides. One looks like a restaurant, and she heads toward it, feeling her stomach grumble.

One of the little shadow monsters oozes up out of the ground, making her stumble back with a yelp. She turns and ducks away from more that pop up, unable to stop herself from comparing them to inky little zits, and runs up a small flight of stairs. The path to the shop directly ahead of her remains blissfully open, and she bolts for the door. She ducks inside and leans against the door as it shuts, panting.

“I’m guessin’ you’re Kairi?”

Kairi freezes in the split second before she realizes that the owner of the voice is a person and not a monster. She looks over and sees a grizzled blond man reclining behind the shop’s counter with his feet propped up on it. He’s chewing on a toothpick and staring flatly at her.

“H-how do you know my name?” she stammers.

“Another kid stopped in a few minutes ago, called himself Sora. He was real insistent on not bein’ a kid, though he couldn’t be anythin’ else with that baby face.”

Kairi’s heart leaps into her throat. “Sora came in here?”

“Sure did,” the man says. “Mentioned some other kid too - Riku. Then he ran off to go lookin’ in the other districts.”

“Which way?” Kairi demands.

“Now hold on.” The man’s shoes come down off the counter as he leans forward. “Your friend ain’t goin’ very far just yet. And he had that key with him, holdin’ it like some kinda fancy toy sword, but if you’re gonna go out after him you ain’t doin’ it without any defense. Not with those little monsters runnin’ around. You’re gonna at least want somethin’ to knock ‘em away.”

Kairi follows the man with her eyes as he stands and ambles out from behind the counter, opening a locked door in the corner. It swings open to reveal cleaning supplies, several piles of brightly colored, oddly-shaped objects, and more real weapons - not sloppily carved wooden replicas - than Kairi has ever seen in her life. “I don’t... have any money,” she says sheepishly.

The man sighs. “Tell ya what,” he says. “You borrow somethin’ you like, and when you find your friend the two of you come back here and you can return it. Don’t worry about payin’, unless you bring it back broken.”

Kairi steps up to the closet and pokes one of the bright objects. “What are these?”

“Gummi blocks,” the man says. “You build ships with ‘em, to go to other worlds.”

“Other worlds?”

“Sure, sometimes,” the man says. “Don’t know how you and Sora got here from your island, but most travelers build or buy gummi ships. The parts are damn rare, so I’ve been stockin’ up and keeping them safe. Any more questions?”

“Where… is ‘here’, exactly?” Kairi asks, feeling sick. Does he know what happened to the island?

“Traverse Town,” the man explains. “Whenever someone’s home gets lost, sometimes they end up here. Whatever’s goin’ on out there, people have been showin’ up a lot more often.” He frowns. “Can’t mean anythin’ good.”

“Lost…” Kairi repeats. She remembers the swirling storm, the way the wind whipped at the trees and carried pieces of the ground and streams of the sea off into a deep void. It’s not hard to realize that lost means _gone_ , and the contents of the closet start to blur.

The man places a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve been there. Breakin’ the news ain’t any easier than realizin’ it yourself either.”

Kairi blinks back the building tears and resists the temptation to rub at her eyes. She can cry later. She scans the weapons in the closet, considering her options. Most of them are heavy-looking bludgeons, or longer weapons with pointed tips. She picks up a pair of shorter spearlike ones, taking one in each hand and hefting them thoughtfully. Even at their smaller size, they have a decent weight; if she wanted to she could use them as clubs, too.

The man grunts. “Nice choice.”

Kairi steps back from the closet, holding her new weapons. “Thank you, Mr….?”

“Cid,” he says. “Follow the lamps to the second and third districts, Sora should be runnin’ around there. Come back here if you need anythin’ else and I’ll see what I can do.”

She nods, and goes to the door. “Thanks for everything, Mr. Cid!”

As she leaves she hears him say “It’s just Cid!” before the door to the shop swings shut.

Taking a deep breath and feeling much more confident with weapons in her hands, she sets out through the streets of Traverse Town to find Sora and Riku.

\--

The second district is relatively empty, and Kairi is relieved to not be surrounded by the buglike shadow monsters that keep popping up. She tries to ignore the fear that their presence means Traverse Town is going to disappear, too, and investigates the district for signs that her friends have been here. She finds the occasional piece of money on the ground, but not a single person is out and about. Probably because of the monsters running around, but it’s hard to ignore how creepy the empty streets are.

She wanders in and out of a hotel and a confusing gizmo shop with nothing to show for her investigations but a building soreness in her muscles. The monsters weirdly don’t leave any marks when they land a hit, but they definitely inflict pain, and she’s not exactly used to the exertion of fighting. With a sigh, she makes her way toward the gate that says “third district”.

The door opens into what looks like a small plaza with a fountain in the corner - and in the center, a gang of the monsters surrounding _Sora_.

He looks even more tired than Kairi feels, and as she watches, he swings the giant key into a trio of the monsters, sending them flying. They hit the ground and burst into puffs of black smoke, with a small mote of reddish-pink light floating up into the night. Weirdly enough, it looks like they’re leaving money behind, which explains why Kairi kept finding it on the ground..

Sora staggers as another group slams into his back, and Kairi runs forward, leaping into the fray with what she hopes is an intimidating yell. She swings her mini-spears and sends about a third of the gang of monsters away. They don’t disappear, though; it looks like the key might be the only thing that can really get rid of them.

“Kairi!?” Sora exclaims in between swings. “You’re here too?”

“Sure am, and I’m saving your butt!” Kairi spears a pair of monsters into a shish kebab. She can’t destroy them, but she can at least keep them off Sora’s back until he can take care of them.

Eventually the last monster is gone, leaving the two of them standing in the empty plaza. Sora turns to face Kairi with a grin and pulls her into a tight hug. “You’re okay!” he shouts in her ear. “I was looking everywhere for you!” He pulls back, looking worried. “Have you seen Riku?”

Kairi shakes her head. “I was hoping you had already found him. I haven’t seen anyone in this place outside of that dog, Mr. Cid, and now you.”

“You met Cid too?” Sora asks.

“Yep, he gave me these!” Kairi holds out her mini-spears, letting Sora get a good look at them.

“Whoa, those are so cool!” he says. “Thanks for saving my butt, too. I was getting pretty tired and those things kept ganging up on me.”

“I’m glad I got here in time,” Kairi said. “Otherwise I would’ve seen you get beaten up by a bunch of shadow bugs.”

Sora pouts. “They’re mean!”

Kairi laughs, taking his hand and squeezing it. “Come on, let’s keep looking for Riku.”

She patrols the third district with a spring in her step, feeling much happier now that she’s back with one of her friends. Sora fills her in on what happened since he woke up here - he saw one of those monsters take someone’s _heart_ \- and then immediately cracks a joke, like he’s trying not to think about it.

There’s still no sign of Riku.

“He wasn’t with us when the island was falling apart,” Kairi says slowly. “Maybe he ended up somewhere else.” _Please be okay, Riku._

“Then we’ll just have to go look for him everywhere!” Sora says.

Kairi nods. “Mr. Cid said he knows how to build ships that go to other worlds.”

“Really?” Sora asks. When Kairi nods again, he grins. “That’s great! Maybe he can build one for us!”

“I hope so,” Kairi says. “Let’s go tell him we couldn’t find Riku. Maybe he can give us a place to stay for the night.”

Sora leads her through an archway that ends up leading them back into the first district, and Kairi adds it to the map of Traverse Town she’s building in her head. She’s wondering where that dog that woke her up is when she bumps into Sora, who has stopped dead at the top of the steps.

Someone is standing in front of Cid’s shop.

He looks several years older than the two of them, and is carrying a massive sword with an oddly shaped hilt.

“Those things will keep coming at you,” he says, not even bothering to introduce himself. “As long as you continue to wield the Keyblade.”

Sora’s knuckles whiten around the hilt of the giant key - the Keyblade - and Kairi watches the swordsman warily.

“But why would it choose a kid like you?” he asks, sounding like he’s just thinking out loud.

Kairi follows his gaze to the Keyblade. Does he… want it?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sora demands. His posture shifts as he moves into a fighting stance.

The man’s eyes snap up, and suddenly he’s focused on Sora so intently that Kairi takes an involuntary half step back from the force of it. “Never mind.” He starts to walk forward. “Now, let’s see that Keyblade.”

Sora raises it defiantly. “No way!”

“Why do you want it?” Kairi blurts out.

The man halts. S l o w l y shifts his gaze to Kairi. Her stomach does a backflip, but she stands her ground. “Th - those shadow things keep popping up and trying to get it,” she says. “If they want it, and you want it, are you working with them?

The man scoffs. “The Heartless don’t work with anybody. They barely work with themselves.” The… Heartless? He takes another step forward, holding out his hand. “The Keyblade.”

Kairi takes a deep breath, and adjusts her grip on her mini-spears. “No.”

The man sighs. “Alright. The hard way it is.” He raises his sword, and _moves._

The man’s elbow slams into Sora’s gut, making him double over with a wheeze and stumble backward from the force. Then he whirls around and kicks Kairi, sending her flying back.

She lands hard, and the impact knocks the wind out of her. She struggles to her feet, wheezing, as the man beats Sora back with aggressive, wide sweeps of his blade, each barely blocked by the Keyblade. She starts forward, and the man raises his empty hand towards her. _Something_ seems to swirl out of the air, gathering into a _fireball -_

Kairi dives to the side as the man launches the fireball toward her. It lands in an explosion of sparks and heat, and as soon as she’s up again Kairi charges before the man can do that again.

She swings her mini-spear, and he blocks it almost lazily with his forearm. Moving too quickly for her to follow, he snatches both mini-spears out of her hands and tosses them across the plaza, then shoves her hard enough to send her to the ground again, and goes back to pounding Sora.

Kairi gets back up. Sora goes down, Keyblade still held loosely in his hand. The man turns his head toward Kairi.

She dives toward Sora and rolls, scooping up the Keyblade. She faces the man and grips it in both hands, panting heavily.

The man looks mildly surprised. “Both of them…?” he murmurs. Then he shakes his head, and raises his own blade again.

Kairi’s arms and legs are shaking like leaves in the wind. She needs _help_. “Mr. Cid!” she yells toward the accessory shop. “Help!”

There’s a rush of movement, and the man is suddenly behind her. She swings the Keyblade wildly and as he ducks under it he whacks her wrist with the hilt of his sword. She yelps, nearly losing her grip on the Keyblade, but manages to cling to it with one hand. He brings the hilt around and slams it against the top of her head.

Kairi slumps to the ground, seeing stars.

“Wow, you’re slipping, Leon,” someone says from a thousand miles away. “Two kids like this should’ve been out in seconds.”

“They’re scrappy,” the man - Leon says, even farther away. Kairi’s eyes slide shut, and she feels herself slipping out of consciousness. “Besides, I went easy on ‘em.”

The last thing she hears is a grim “Looks like things are a lot worse than we thought.”

\---

“Hey. C’mon, sleepyhead, wake up.”

Kairi groans as something pokes her cheek. Her head throbs.

“Up and at ‘em, let’s go!”

The something pokes her cheek harder, and Kairi opens her eyes, grimacing.

A girl with short dark hair is leaning upside down over her face. When she’s satisfied with Kairi’s current level of consciousness, she steps out of Kairi’s view and keeps talking. “You too, kid, we don’t have all day!”

She hears another groan from the side the girl stepped off to, and an annoyed sigh. “I think you overdid it, Squall!” the girl calls.

“It’s Leon,” someone says, and Kairi recognizes _that_ voice. She sits up, clutching her head, and turns to give the man who knocked her out what she hopes is a fierce glare.

“Wha…. Who’s Squall?” Sora asks, sitting up next to Kairi.

“Nobody,” says Leon. “Not anymore, anyway.”

“Okay!” the girl says, clapping her hands together. “That’s Squ- I mean, Leon, and I’m Yuffie. Sorry for the rude welcome, but _someone_ doesn’t know how to get people to come with him without using brute force. Those monsters outside? They’re after that Keyblade. Well, technically, they’re after your hearts, because you wield it. Both of you, I guess.”

“The Keyblade?” Kairi looks around in a panic when she realizes it’s not in her hand, and notices it leaning against the wall by the door.

“Yeah, we had to get it away from you to shake ‘em off. It’s how they were able to track you down.”

“It was the only way to conceal your hearts from them,” Leon says. “But it won’t work for long, especially not with two of you.”

“Kinda hard to believe that you’re _both_ the chosen ones!” Yuffie says brightly. “It’s like getting an extra prize in the cereal box.” She picks up the Keyblade, going to swing it lightly in one hand. As she does it vanishes in a flash of light and appears in Kairi’s hand.

Leon sighs. “I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Whoa,” Sora says. “I want to do that too!” He holds out his hand, furrowing his brow in concentration. After a few moments, the Keyblade changes hands in another flash of light.

“Oh, lighten up, Leon. You said yourself they’re scrappy!”

“Excuse you, I was holding that,” Kairi says, and calls it back to her own hand.

The two of them stare at each other before breaking into identical grins. Sora calls the Keyblade into his hand, then Kairi takes it back, then Sora, then Kairi, each transfer punctuated with flashes of light.

“Scrappy doesn’t equate to hero material, Yuffie.”

_Flash._

“Come on, they’re like, half your age! Maybe cut them a little slack for not being combat experts.”

_Flash._

“Every world is in danger, and we have to depend on a couple of kids who - will you two _please_ stop that?” Leon says.

They freeze in the middle of their baton-passing game. With a final _flash_ , the Keyblade goes to Sora.

“What do you mean, ‘every world is in danger’?” Kairi asks.

“There are lots of worlds besides this one,” Yuffie explains. “But there’s limited contact between them because they’re all disconnected, so almost no one knows about worlds outside their own.”

“But now they’re being connected,” Leon says. “And every time, Heartless begin invading the newly connected world.”

“The Heartless?” Sora asks.

“The monsters that have been attacking you,” Yuffie says.

“Those without hearts,” Leon says, like he’s quoting something.

“They’re attracted to the darkness in people’s hearts.” Yuffie flops down onto the bed next to Kairi.

“And there is darkness within every heart.” Leon stares at Kairi like he’s judging the quality of her heart. She shivers.

“Have you ever heard of someone named Ansem?” Yuffie asks.

Sora and Kairi both shake their heads.

“He was this scientist studying the Heartless forever ago,” she explains. “He recorded all of his findings in a huge report.”

“Findings like how to beat the Heartless?” Kairi asks.

“Maybe. But the pages of the report have been scattered to a bunch of different worlds, so no one has any idea where they all are.”

“The only thing we really know is that the Keyblade is the only thing that can get rid of a Heartless permanently,” Leon says. “That’s why as long as you wield it, they’ll keep coming after you.”

“We didn’t _ask_ for it,” Sora says.

“The Keyblade chooses its master,” Yuffie says. “And evidently, it chose you two.”

“So, tough luck,” Leon says, sounding completely unsympathetic.

“What are we supposed to do, then?” Kairi asks. “If we’ve been chosen by this Keyblade?”

Leon shrugs. “Stop the Heartless from destroying every world?” He angles his head toward Yuffie. “Let’s go join Aerith with -”

“Leon!” Yuffie leaps off the bed, pointing at a shape coalescing out of the shadows in the corner of the room.

The shape forms into what Kairi thinks might be a Heartless, but not one of the little shadows. This one is wearing a set of armor that rattles as it shakes itself upon emerging from the floor.

“Yuffie, go!” Leon orders. She bolts for the door, throwing it open. It smashes into the wall on the other side, and Kairi thinks she hears something squeal in pain. Someone in the other room shouts Yuffie’s name as she charges through, throwing open the door at the other end as well. Leon turns toward Kairi and Sora. “You two, let’s go!”

He picks up his massive sword, and the armored Heartless takes one look at him and jumps out the window. Leon growls and gives chase, vaulting easily over the windowsill.

Kairi runs to the window and looks out. There’s a ledge running along the wall that looks about level with the floor of the room she’s in, so she starts clambering out the window. Sora still hasn’t moved, instead just gaping at her and the window, and she takes the Keyblade. “Hurry _up_ , Sora!”

She drops down into the alley as Leon sends a trio of the armored Heartless flying. They hit into a wall and pop, dissolving into shadows that melt along the ground.

“Don’t bother with these little ones,” he says as she straightens up from the landing. Sora lands with an _oof_ next to her. He’s holding what looks like the leg of a chair. Right, she did just kind of claim the only weapon they have between them. “Look for a leader!”

He runs off as Kairi slashes at a Heartless leaping at her. The Keyblade slams it into the ground and it pops, releasing a small mote of reddish-pink light instead of dissolving into shadows. “Oh, that’s satisfying,” she says to herself.

Sora grunts as he whacks another Heartless away. “What’s the leader supposed to look like?”

“I’m guessing bigger and meaner than all the others,” Kairi says. “Come on!” She grabs Sora’s hand and starts running down the alley.

They weave through and around clusters of Heartless, armored and normal, stopping to fight them off when too many start crowding around.

They make it back to the third district and Sora grabs Kairi’s arm. “Look up there,” he hisses, pointing toward a high ledge. There’s someone standing there, though Kairi can’t make out any detail, and she can hear faint voices. Then something sends the person flying backward, and with a pair of screams they and another shape fall right toward Kairi and Sora.

They dive to either side to avoid being crushed, and Kairi stares at the large duck and the giant… dog... thing both groaning on the ground. The duck notices Kairi and lets out what she can only describe as a surprised quack.

“The key!” the duck says. At least, Kairi thinks that’s what it says. Its voice just kind of sounds like more quacking.

“Jeez, how many people are after this stupid key?” Sora complains.

The ground starts rumbling violently, and Kairi’s glad she hasn’t tried to stand up yet. A bunch of pillars shoot up from the ground, blocking the exits out of the plaza, and more Heartless appear on top of them.

The dog thing hefts a heavy-looking shield and the duck brandishes a staff, and both charge at the Heartless. Kairi gets to her feet and does the same.

“Hey, Kairi!” Sora calls. She looks over at him, and he bats a Heartless over to her like a baseball. She slams it to the ground with the Keyblade, destroying it, and he cheers.

With the new arrivals helping, it doesn’t take long to dispatch the Heartless, and Kairi looks around warily as an uneasy silence falls. She still has that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that she’s begun to associate with Heartless nearby, but there’s nothing in sight. And then she looks up.

A giant suit of empty armor drops to the ground, sending another set of shakes through the plaza. Its chest features the same red and black, vaguely heart-shaped emblem present on the smaller armored Heartless. The arm and leg pieces of the armor don’t have anything connecting them to the chest, but all the pieces float next to each other in a humanoid shape.

“I think we found the boss!” Sora says. The armor’s head swivels toward him, and an arm shoots out toward him. Kairi throws herself between them, and the metal fist slams into the raised Keyblade, pushing her back into Sora and sending both of them back several feet.

The duck shouts something Kairi is pretty sure is a battle cry, and it and the dog leap to engage the armor.

“Your turn,” Kairi says, holding the Keyblade out to Sora.

He takes it, tossing Kairi the chair leg. “Be careful,” he says, and charges into the fray.

“You be careful,” Kairi grumbles. She hesitates out of the armor’s field of vision, suddenly a lot more hesitant without the magic key in her hand. As she watches, the armor winds up and spins wildly, forcing Sora and the other two to dive out of the way. The dog tucks and rolls neatly out of the way of one of the fists, easily avoiding it.

Before she can change her mind, Kairi adjusts her grip on the chair leg and darts into the armor’s blind spot, hitting the armored leg as hard as she can. The armor stomps, sending out a shockwave that knocks Kairi to the ground. It starts to swivel around toward her, and Sora runs up from behind it, attacking the same spot on its leg. As it turns again, there’s a shout from the duck and a fireball hits the leg, and one more swipe from Sora makes it burst into fragments of shadow, just like the smaller Heartless.

She _needs_ to ask someone to teach her how to do that. Throwing fire would certainly be more effective than swinging around a piece of furniture.

Sora tosses her the Keyblade. “Thanks!” she says, throwing him the chair leg. She ducks another wild spin from the armor, and starts attacking one of the arms in earnest.

They fall into a pattern of dodging the armor’s flailing attacks, drawing its attention, and hitting it when its back is turned. With each piece destroyed, the Keyblade changes hands, until finally the torso bursts into fragments of shadow, and the pink mote of light floats up into the sky. Kairi sits down hard, panting heavily, and Sora drops down next to her. She sees him scoop up something metallic where the armor had been, and pockets it after a brief inspection.

Kairi glances over at the duck and the dog, who have formed a two-person (two-animal?) huddle and are whispering back and forth. If she strains, she can just barely make out some of what they’re saying.

“... didn’t say anything about ...”

“... could be a trap ...”

“... took care … well enough, it’s probably the real deal…”

“But two!?” The duck doesn’t seem to be very good at whispering.

“The more the merrier, right?” Scratch that, neither of them are.

“Hey,” Sora says, getting their attention. “Are you looking for the Keyblade?”

“We’re lookin’ for the Keyblade’s chosen wielder,” the dog says.

“Well, you’ve found them,” says a familiar voice behind Kairi. She whirls around and sees Leon standing there, with Yuffie just behind him. They both look out of breath. “Both of them.”

“Why don’t you come with us?” the dog asks. “We can travel to other worlds on our ship.”

Kairi gasps. “Sora, we can look for Riku!”

He nods excitedly, and turns to the duck and the dog. “Do you think we could find him?”

“Of course!” the duck says.

The dog pulls the duck back into a huddle. “Are you sure?” it - maybe he? - whispers. Kairi can clearly hear every word.

“Who knows?” the duck says. “But we need them and the Keyblade in order to find the king.”

Leon steps forward, crossing his arms. “You should go with them,” he says. “Especially if you want to find your friends.”

Sora pulls Kairi closer, and the two of them form their own huddle. “They don’t even know if we can find Riku,” he whispers. “If we’re busy running around with them we might never find him.”

“They’re looking for someone too,” Kairi whispers back. “We can look for Riku and help them find this king they’re looking for at the same time. Besides, doesn’t that sound like an awesome adventure? Traveling all over, looking for a lost king?”

“I guess,” he says. He breaks the huddle, looking back at the duck and the dog. “Okay, we’ll come with you.”

“Donald Duck,” the duck says, holding out a hand.

“I’m Goofy,” says the dog, putting his hand - it’s hard not to call it a paw - on top of Donald’s.

“I’m Sora.” Sora adds his hand to the pile.

“Kairi.” She puts her hand on top, completing the stack.

“All for one, and one for all!” Goofy says, leading some kind of team cheer.

“Is your ship like a gummi ship?” Kairi asks. “Cid mentioned they travel between worlds.”

“Sure is!” Goofy says.

“Come on,” Donald says, breaking the circle and stomping away. “We should leave ASAP.”

Aerith joins them as they make their way back to the first district. “It’s good to see you’ve all found each other. Here, this is from all three of us.”

She drops a pouch into Kairi’s hand. When it lands, she hears the jingling of coins inside.

“Make sure you stock up on supplies before you leave,” Yuffie says. “It can get kinda dangerous out there, especially if you’ve got a Heartless magnet like that Keyblade.”

Kairi nods. “We will, thanks.”

“And these, too,” Leon says. He hands her the two spears Cid gave her. “You may want stronger combat capabilities later, but these should serve for now.”

“Can you show me how to do that thing you did with the fire?” she asks.

Leon hesitates.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Yuffie says. “Magic’s not as good as a Keyblade for taking out Heartless, but it’s definitely better than basic weapons. These kids need something half decent as a backup if they’re taking turns with the Keyblade.”

He sighs. “If you’ve got the time for it, I can try.”

“Me too?” Sora asks. “I want to shoot fire, that sounds awesome!”

“Sure.”

“Can you show us that dodge roll thing you did with the armor, too?” she asks Goofy.

“Sure thing!”

Leon runs through the basics of magic for Kairi while Goofy shows Sora how to roll, and Kairi cheers when a small ball of fire appears above her hand. It radiates intense heat, almost scorching her palm.

“Now aim it where you want it to go, and release it,” Leon says.

Kairi turns toward Sora, holding out her hand. “Hey, Sora!” she calls. She waits until he turns and can see the fire in her hand before releasing the spell. He yelps as the small fireball shoots toward him and rolls out of the way, landing smoothly on his feet. Yuffie applauds enthusiastically from the sidelines.

Donald _hmph_ s. “Not bad for a newbie.”

Kairi sticks out her tongue at him and wobbles a bit, and Leon puts a hand on her shoulder to stabilize her. “I feel so tired,” she says.

“Casting spells uses up your innate magical energy,” Leon explains. “You’ve never used magic before, so your reserves are pretty small. They’ll increase as you keep practicing. Your magic replenishes on its own over time, but if you’re in a pinch…” He hands her a small bottle. “Something like an ether will restore it right away, but your magic will replenish slower for a little while afterwards. Too much and you’ll burn yourself out.”

Kairi nods. She uncorks the ether and drinks about half of it, saving the rest for Sora. She instantly feels less like she’s about to fall over, and now that she knows what she’s looking for she can feel her magic humming somewhere deep in her chest.

“Okay, let’s switch,” Leon says. “Sora, your turn.”

\--

When Sora and Kairi part ways with Leon, Yuffie, and Aerith, it’s with two new skills under their belts and their pockets full of potions and ethers. The metallic object Sora had found after defeating the armor turns out to be a protective bracelet, which he gives to Kairi despite her protests. “I’ll just take the next one,” he says with a wide grin.

Donald and Goofy lead them through the large gates in the first district, and Kairi gets her first glimpse of the Gummi Ship.

It’s… underwhelming. And ugly.

The ship is composed of large gummi blocks, like the ones Kairi had seen in Cid’s shop, making the ship brightly colored and chunky - not at all like she’d imagined a ship capable of traveling to other worlds would look like. The cockpit is a large glass dome at the top of the ship, and overall it looks like Baby’s First Spaceship Drawing. Still, beggars can’t be choosers; Donald and Goofy consider it reliable, and if it can take her to other worlds she won’t complain. Much.

She follows Donald, Goofy, and Sora up a gangplank that descends from the back end of the ship. The interior is just as chunky and brightly colored. They’re standing in a small chamber with ladders going both up and down; she assumes going up would take her to the cockpit, and going down would put her in the engine compartment. How exactly someone would get a working engine out of gummi blocks, she has no idea. She peers down the hole, but all she sees is a random tangle of shapes made out of the same material as the rest of the ship.

“Kairi, come on!” Sora says. He’s already halfway up the ladder, and she can hear Donald and Goofy moving around and talking up in the cockpit.

She follows him up, and immediately notices a problem. “There’s only three chairs,” she says.

“Well, we weren’t expecting two of you,” Donald says.

“Looks like you’ll just have to sit on Sora’s lap until we can modify the cockpit,” Goofy adds.

Kairi and Sora share a skeptical look.

“Well, this should certainly be an interesting adventure!” someone says.

Not recognizing the voice, Kairi looks around, but there’s no one in the cockpit besides her, Sora, Donald, and Goofy.

“Down here, miss.”

She looks down and blinks. Standing in the chair is a tiny figure, wearing a top hat and a fancy jacket and holding a tiny umbrella. “The name’s Jiminy Cricket, and I’m in charge of chronicling this expedition! It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Likewise,” Kairi says faintly. If she meets another talking animal anytime soon she’s going to scream, probably. Or faint.

“I’m Sora, and this is Kairi,” Sora says. “We can wield the Keyblade.”

“Both of you?” Jiminy asks. They nod. “Well, isn’t that something. The more the merrier, is what I say.” He hops off the chair and makes his way to the control panel at the front of the cockpit, leaping up on top of it.

“Make sure you buckle up,” Donald says. He and Goofy have already strapped themselves into the other two chairs in the cockpit. “The takeoff is bumpy.”

Sora sits down first, and Kairi hesitates. “I can just stand and hang onto something in the back -”

“Nope!” Donald interrupts. “Everyone sits down and buckles up!”

She sighs and gives Sora an apologetic look. He shrugs, and she sits down in his lap. They wriggle around, trying to find a position that isn’t hellishly uncomfortable and then attempting to wrap the seatbelt around both of them.

Once Donald is satisfied with their safety restraints, he starts the ship. It rumbles underneath them for a few seconds, and then rises into the air. It keeps rising, faster and faster, and Kairi hears Sora grunting in pain as the force of their ascent presses Kairi down into him.

Eventually the ship slows, and starts moving forward instead of up. The rumbling fades away as well, and Kairi fumbles for the seatbelt. It clicks open, and she and Sora bolt to the window (ignoring Donald’s shouting to “SIT DOWN”), pressing their faces against it.

Kairi’s view is full of thousands of bright, glimmering stars. They’re tinted in multiple colors, bluish stars next to reddish stars next to solid white stars. Some of the stars are partly hidden by strange clouds, making them glow with even more colors.

It’s the most breathtakingly beautiful thing Kairi’s ever seen.

“There’s so many,” Sora breathes.

Jiminy hops up next to them. “Each of those stars is another world,” he says.

Kairi looks out at the sea of twinkling lights, suddenly feeling very small. “I wish Riku could see this,” she says quietly.

“Maybe he already has,” Sora says. “Maybe somewhere out there on one of those worlds, he’s looking for us too.” He squints and leans forward, pointing toward one of the stars. “Hey, that one’s getting dimmer.”

Kairi follows his finger and sees a bluish star, half-hidden by a purple cloud. As she watches, the blue light fades until it winks out completely.

“Oh dear,” Jiminy says, and Kairi feels her stomach sink.

“It’s been swallowed up by the darkness,” she says.

“Like our island was,” Sora says.

Kairi finds Sora’s hand and holds it tightly. She lets the warmth remind her she’s not alone, and hopes desperately that wherever Riku is, he’s not alone either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi I'm fixated on Kingdom Hearts now
> 
> Alt titles for this AU: co-op au, mom said it's my turn on the keyblade


	2. Wonderland Prison Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sora and Kairi's journey to find Riku takes them first to Wonderland, and things get a little strange. Kairi masters parkour. Sora takes a prisoner. Alice broadens her horizons.

Kairi drifts down gently to the floor, her heart still beating a hundred miles an hour. Walking out of the gummi ship right into a pit had been an unpleasant surprise, even if her fall had slowed somehow before she hit the ground. Next to her, Sora looks just as shocked as she feels and Goofy lands on his face.

“What is this place?” Sora asks. Kairi scans the room; the patterns on the floor and walls are distorted, and the furniture she had seen from above turns out to be merely painted onto the floor. Looking up, the hole she and the others had fallen through has been replaced seamlessly with an equally distorted ceiling.

“I believe this world is called ‘Wonderland’,” Jiminy pipes up from his perch on Sora’s shoulder. “I’ve heard of it on my travels, but I can’t say I’ve ever been here myself.”

Even knowing what the world is called is useful, and Kairi is grateful to Jiminy for being able to name the Heartless that keep popping up, too.

Something pushes past Kairi at about the height of her waist, muttering frantically to itself. She muffles a groan as she realizes it’s a giant  _ talking _ white rabbit.

“Oh, my fur and whiskers! I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!” it’s saying, apparently not even noticing Kairi and the others. Like Jiminy, the rabbit is dressed formally, although it does appear to be actually wearing pants. It’s holding an enormous pocket watch, but the hour and minute hands look like they’re moving randomly rather than telling the time. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! I’m here, I should be there.”

“Hey,” Donald says, but the rabbit either doesn’t hear or is ignoring him.

“I’m late, I’m late, I’m late! The queen, she’ll have my head for sure!” the rabbit wails, running off down a short hallway and careening around the corner.

“A queen?” Kairi asks.

“She’d execute him just for being late?” Sora asks.

“I don’t think he meant she’d literally have his head, Sora.”

“We don’t know. This whole place is really weird.” Sora pokes the painted-on furniture with his toe, and jumps back with a yelp as a loveseat suddenly springs up from the floor, solidifying into a real object in seconds.

“Let’s follow that rabbit!” Donald says.

The hallway leads to a simple white door, its frame distorted by the bizarre dimensions of the hallway. The floor itself wobbles up and down, making Kairi feel like she’s in a box made of funhouse mirrors.

Sora pulls open the door to reveal… another door. He opens the second door, and the next, finally revealing a room beyond. The doorway is just big enough for Sora and Kairi to fit through, and Goofy has to bend over to fit.

This next room has the same mix of painted and real furniture, and Kairi sees the rabbit - now much smaller - run away from a painted table in the middle of the room and through a tiny door on the opposite wall.

Sora crouches in front of the new door. “How did he get so small?” he wonders.

The doorknob blinks open a pair of eyes. “You’re simply too big,” it says, using its keyhole as a mouth.

Sora yelps and jumps back. “It talks!”

The doorknob yawns, its metal face stretching improbably. “Must you be so loud? You woke me up.” 

“Good morning,” Goofy says with a small wave.

“Good  _ night _ ,” the doorknob says pointedly. “I need a bit more sleep.” With that, it closes eyes and begins snoring. The snores sound suspiciously fake - like Sora pretending to be asleep to get out of working on their raft.

“Wait!” Sora says. The doorknob opens one eye, looking annoyed. “How do we grow small like that?”

“Try the bottle on the table,” the doorknob says, closing its eye and going back to snoring.

Kairi pokes the table with her foot, and it springs up like the loveseat in the other room. There’s a pair of bottles on the table; one with a red label with a tree shape on it, the other with a blue label depicting a small seedling. The implication is pretty clear: the red bottle grows things, the blue bottle shrinks things.

She picks up the blue one, steeling herself. “Well, here goes nothing,” she says, and drinks it. The bottle falls out of her hand as  _ something _ presses on her from all sides and her vision wavers. When it clears, the first thing she sees is the blue-labeled bottle - now taller than she is.

“Whoa!” Sora  _ looms _ over her, and if she wasn’t already utterly bewildered by this world she’s pretty sure she’d be terrified. “You’re so tiny, Kairi!” He picks up the bottle, preparing to take a drink himself.

“Wait a sec!” Goofy says. “It looks like there’s an opening behind this bed here.”

Kairi jumps down, her fall slowing yet again just before she hits the floor. She walks over to the opening framed in purple, but the bed is covering too much of it for her to squeeze through, even as small as she is. “How do we move this bed?” she wonders.

She nearly screams as Sora’s foot lands next to her, and he pushes on the bed. She’s about to say it won’t do anything because there’s a wall there when the bed  _ does _ move, sliding right into the wall and becoming a painted design.

Right. Magic furniture.

Sora goes back to the table and drinks from the blue bottle, and Donald and Goofy follow suit. As they jump down to the floor, a group of Heartless appear, including some red and orange floating ones with the same emblem on their chests.

Sora starts attacking with the Keyblade and Kairi readies her new fire spell, aiming it at the floating Heartless. When she fires, the spell soars toward the Heartless and dissipates harmlessly instead of hitting it. The floating Heartless are immune to fire. Awesome.

Kairi calls the Keyblade, ignoring Sora’s surprised yell, and swings upward, letting the weapon’s momentum carry her into the air as she brings it back around. Her next overhead swing knocks the Heartless to the ground. She dispatches it with a few more swings and makes short work of the rest of the floaters. She lands on the ground, panting, as the last one releases its mote of pink light. Do the Heartless release... hearts?

“You okay, Kairi?” Sora asks. He looks pale and winded; he was probably using a lot of magic.

“The flying ones were immune to the fire,” she says.

“Oh,” he says. “Maybe because they were red?”

She giggles. “That sounds a little too silly.”

“Hey, this whole place is silly!”

Another group of Heartless appears as they approach the opening again, and Kairi lets Sora take the Keyblade and the flying ones while she dispatches the Shadows on the ground. She forces down her frustration as they merely disappear instead of being permanently destroyed.

They finally make their way through the opening unharassed by Heartless, and out into a gardenlike area with weirdly two-dimensional scenery. A bunch of playing cards with human heads, wearing armor and carrying pikes, border the area. At the center is a blonde girl wearing a blue dress, standing behind a podium shaped like an open rectangle. Beyond the front of a podium is a tall wooden structure, containing a portly, sour-looking woman wearing red and black, with a golden crown sitting on top of her head. The whole setup looks like a courtroom.

Donald grabs Kairi’s arm as she steps forward, doing the same to Sora on his other side. “We need to keep a low profile,” he hisses. “Most people don’t know about other worlds, and they need to stay that way. We can’t interfere with what happens on other worlds.”

The rabbit from before runs up a small set of stairs to a third podium that forms a triangle between the girl and the queen. Looking extremely out of breath, he raises a trumpet to his mouth and plays a short fanfare. “Court is now in session!” he wheezes. “Her Majesty, the Queen of Hearts, presiding.”

The girl gasps. “I’m on trial? But why?”

The Queen or Hearts leans forward, sneering down at the girl. “This girl is the culprit!” she announces, waving a small wand tipped with a large red heart. “There’s no doubt about it. And the reason is -” she slams the hand holding the wand down onto the podium with a loud  _ bang _ . “Because I say so, that’s why!”

“This trial is a sham!” Sora hisses. He starts forward and Donald grabs his arm again, yanking him back.

“We can’t interfere!”

“That is so unfair!” the girl protests.

“Well, have you anything to say in your defense?” the Queen of Hearts challenges.

“Of course I do, I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong!” the girl says. “You may be a queen, but that doesn’t give you the right to throw your weight around for no reason!”

The rabbit gasps as the Queen of Hearts surges to her feet, slamming both hands down onto the podium. “SILENCE!” she thunders. “You dare to not only defy me, but insult my weight while you’re at it!?”

“No, that’s not what I meant -”

“The court finds the defendant GUILTY AS CHARGED!” the Queen shouts. Kairi is beginning to suspect her only volumes are Loud and Louder. “For the crimes of assault and attempted theft of my heart -”

“Her heart?” Kairi whispers.

“Heartless,” Sora says. “They must have been here before we showed up.”

“- OFF WITH HER HEAD!” the Queen roars. Kairi’s heart drops down into her stomach as she realizes the rabbit may not have been exaggerating after all.

The playing card soldiers turn as one toward the girl as she cowers in fear. “No! No, please, wait!”

Kairi and Sora move at the same time. “Stop!” Sora yells. The card soldiers part as if on instinct to let them pass. The girl turns to look at them, and Kairi sees a mix of terror and hope in her eyes.

“Who are you?” the Queen demands. “How dare you interfere with my court?”

“Sorry, your Majesty,” Kairi says. “But we know who the real culprit is.”

“It’s the Heartle-oof!” Donald elbows Goofy in the stomach before he can finish.

“She’s not the one you’re looking for,” Sora adds.

“That’s nonsense,” the Queen scoffs. “Have you any proof?”

Sora hesitates, and the Queen smirks. “Guards! Seize the girl!”

The guards lunge for the girl, grabbing her by both arms. They push her into a large golden cage, which is raised into the air by a contraption connected to the Queen’s podium.

“Wait!” Kairi says. “We’ll bring you evidence! We can prove she’s innocent, and then you’ll have to release her.”

“Oh?” the Queen leans forward. “And how am I to know you won’t just run off?” A wicked grin spreads across her face. “Guards, seize her as well.”

“What!?” Sora protests.

The rest of the guards swarm around Kairi, in too many numbers for her to duck away, and they hold her arms in vicelike grips.

“You three,” the Queen continues, gesturing to Sora, Donald, and Goofy. “Go collect your evidence. Should this proof not suffice to confirm the girl’s innocence, which is likely, or if you fail to return for your accomplice, it’s OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!”

“You can’t do that!” Sora says.

“I’m the Queen of Hearts!” she snaps. “I can do whatever I want!”

“Just go, Sora,” Kairi says. “It’ll be okay.”

“But-”

“When you find the evidence, you can get both of us out.” She stares at him intently, hoping he drops the subject.

He sets his mouth in a determined line. “Fine,” he says. “We’ll be back.”

The guards reopen the cage and shove Kairi inside, locking it with a loud click. Sora gives Kairi a sharp nod before setting off through another hole in the hedges. The cage rises into the air, and Kairi notices a gap in the hedge at about their height, just big enough for both of them to fit through.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” the girl whispers. “I fear she’ll simply declare me guilty regardless of what evidence your friends bring back, and dispose of us both.”

Kairi smiles. “Don’t worry,” she says, keeping her voice low. “I’m not planning on sticking around long enough to find out either way.”

“How will you escape?” the girl asks. “Even if you can get out of this cage, there are guards everywhere, and if they don’t notice you leaving, the queen surely will.”

“I’ll figure something out.” The girl looks doubtful, but she nods. “I’m Kairi, by the way.”

“Alice.” Her blue dress has a white pattern in the front, and a black headband with a bow holds back her hair. She looks like she might be a couple of years younger than Kairi.

Kairi summons the Keyblade, looking at the lock thoughtfully. It  _ is _ a giant, magical key… And when faced with a lock, the first step is to try to unlock it.

She taps the lock with the end of the Keyblade and hears a click. When she pushes on the cage door, it swings open slightly, thankfully not creaking. The Queen of Hearts probably forces all of her soldiers to keep everything in top shape.

Alice gasps. “That’s incredible.”

Kairi looks down at the Keyblade thoughtfully. If she can summon it…. She focuses on it and flexes her hand as if to drop the blade. It disappears with the same soft flash. She really loves this thing.

“That solves the cage problem,” she whispers. “Now we just need something to distract the guards and the Queen.”

As if on cue, a group of Heartless appears, oozing up out of the ground and popping into existence in midair.

The Queen of Hearts, predictably, begins screaming. “Guards! Defend me! Destroy these interlopers!”

Every guard in the room swivels and marches toward the Heartless, leaving the cage unguarded. Kairi’s not going to get a better opportunity than this; she swings the door open.

“Jump through that gap in the hedge,” she tells Alice. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Alice peers apprehensively through the hole in the greenery. She takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and nods, before taking a running jump and sailing through the hole. Kairi hears her hit the ground with a soft  _ oof _ , and jumps out after her. She lands and rolls to her feet, dusting herself off.

They seem to have landed in a forest of giant plants; even the smallest blades of multicolored grass are taller than Kairi is.

“Where are we supposed to go now?” Alice asks.

“Where, indeed?” responds a disembodied voice. Kairi glances around for the source, and jumps back as a grinning, pink and purple cat head materializes in front of her face.

“Cheshire Cat!” Alice says. “Were you watching that whole time?”

“Perhaps I was, perhaps I wasn’t,” the Cheshire Cat says. His voice is lilting, making him sound like he’s singing everything he says. The Cat’s body materializes to reveal him floating in midair. “My question to you is what is it you wish to do? Will you run? Will you join the others here for some fun?”

“There are others in here?” Kairi asks. “Sora, Donald, and Goofy?”

“The three you seek are seeking clues, but they don’t know that you’ve come through.”

“Are you… rhyming?”

The Cheshire Cat’s grin widens. “You catch on swiftly, for an outsider.”

“Thanks?” Kairi says. It’s probably not worth asking how this cat knows she’s not a local. “Can you just tell me where they are?”

“I couldn’t possibly help you with that.” The Cheshire Cat’s body fades from view. “After all, I’m simply a cat.” His head disappears, leaving only his grin, glowing white before it too fades away.

Kairi sighs. “That was frustrating.”

“I don’t think he could give a straight answer if his life depended on it,” Alice remarks.

“Have you encountered that thing before?”

“Once or twice. I tried asking him for directions, and he was just as unhelpful.”

“I guess we have to find Sora and the others on our own,” Kairi decides.

“What if those things that attacked the Queen’s court come after us?”

Kairi holds out one of her spears. “We’ll just have to defend ourselves.”

Alice shrinks away from it nervously. “I don’t think I’m much of a fighter,” she admits.

“We’ll stick together,” Kairi says. She smiles encouragingly. “You just need to be brave.”

Alice stares at the spear for a few long seconds. Finally, she nods firmly and takes it.

“Just stay close to me, no matter what,” Kairi continues. “Hopefully we can find them quickly.”

“Right,” Alice says. She clutches the spear to her chest, like it’s a protective talisman.

In the absence of any better ideas, Kairi chooses a random direction and starts walking, with Alice close behind. The giant plants grow closely together, creating a kind of maze, and Kairi has to double back to find a new route more than once.

At one point she hears a group of Heartless, and pulls Alice into the undergrowth to hide. A small pack of Shadows wanders down the path toward the direction they came from, and Kairi holds her breath as they pass. They don’t seem to notice, and eventually they vanish in the dim light. She hears Alice breathe a sigh of relief next to her, and they keep walking.

After a few minutes, there’s more noise up ahead, and Alice starts to move for the bushes again. “No, wait,” Kairi says. “That sounds like Sora.” She picks up speed, and soon emerges into a clearing.

Sora is holding a squirming Shadow at arm’s length, arguing with Donald. “-any other evidence that we can physically carry back with us?” he’s saying.

“That lady’s crazy,” Donald scoffs. “She’ll think we brought it to attack - Kairi?”

“What? Why would we attack Kairi?”

“No, she’s here!”

Sora turns around and nearly drops the Heartless in surprise. “Kairi!? How did you get out of that cage?”

“Well, I happen to have access to a magic key,” she says dryly. “Turns out it’s pretty good at unlocking things.”

“Oh.”

“Are you quite sure it’s safe to hold that thing?” Alice asks.

“Huh? Oh, probably not, but like I was saying, all the other proof these guys are running around is stuff like footprints or claw marks, and we can’t exactly take that back to show the Queen of Hearts.”

Kairi pokes the Heartless in the stomach. “It’s just a little Shadow,” she says. “Even if it gets free, it should be easy to destroy.”

“The gang’s all here and in the clear,” says a familiar disembodied voice. “But danger, too, is growing near.”

“That cat again!” Sora says.

“You ran into him too?”

“Yep, he keeps popping up and giving us riddles,” Goofy says.

“What do you mean by danger?” Kairi asks the empty air. “More Heartless?”

The Cheshire Cat appears on a tree branch, reclining lazily across it. “The ones you’ve seen are not alone,” it says. “You’ll find their leader in the home.”

“That wasn’t a very good rhyme.”

The Cat grins at her. “The art of rhyme is not precise. Ask politely, and I may still give you ice.”

“Do we  _ want _ ice?” Sora asks warily.

“If it’s magic, we do,” Kairi says. “Cheshire Cat, can you give us ice, please?”

“I don’t know,” the Cat says smugly. “Can I?”

Sora glares at the Cat. “That’s not what she meant and you know- _ mmph! _ ” Kairi covers his mouth.

“We’re supposed to be polite!” she hisses. She lets him go before he can lick her hand (something he has done before, and it’s  _ disgusting _ ) and looks back up at the Cheshire Cat. “ _ May _ you please give us ice?”

“With such lovely manners, how could I possibly refuse?” The Cat’s body fades away, and he blows out a rush of frigid air. Ice crystals spread out in a cone from his mouth, coating Kairi and Sora. Instead of melting off of her skin, the ice sparkles like fragments of glass before sinking into it entirely. Coldness spreads from her arms into her chest, settling into the spot where she can feel her magic reserves.

“That’s so cool,” she breathes.

“Haha, literally,” Sora says, grinning. She elbows him.

A furious scream echoes in the distance. Kairi thinks she hears the Queen yelling  _ FIND THEM! _

“Looks like she found out you’re gone,” Goofy says.

“We should keep as much distance between her and us as possible,” Donald says.

“So where’s this ‘home’?” Kairi asks.

There’s no response from the Cheshire Cat, and Kairi doesn’t see him on the branch.

“The only thing we’ve seen that’s like a house is that room with the bottles,” Sora says. “Could it be that?”

“You’re going after the leader of these… Heartless?” Alice asks.

“Yeah,” Sora says. He drops the Shadow, and it scurries away without even taking a swipe. “Oh, oops. “If we defeat the leader, the rest of them should leave, right?”

“Eventually,” Donald says.

“Let’s do that sooner rather than later, then,” Kairi says.

“But how will you get back to that room? We’d have to pass through the Queen’s court,” Alice points out.

“We found some other entrances while we were looking for clues,” Sora says. “I don’t think avoiding those card soldiers will be an issue.”

“Lead the way,” Kairi says.

Sora takes a meandering path through the forest, muttering to himself, and Kairi can’t help but recall all the times he’d gotten her and Riku lost whenever they went exploring.

“Are we lost?” she asks after Sora doubles back for the third time.

“- and after that, bear slightly to the left - nope!” Sora says. “Here we are!”

They emerge into a clearing dominated by a long table surrounded by empty chairs. Some of the chairs are plain and wooden, while others are ornately upholstered. The table is fully set with plates, silverware, and cups.

“It looks like a tea party,” Alice says. “But with no tea, and no guests.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of creepy that it’s this empty,” Sora says. “Anyway, we went into that cottage right there and it ended up being the same room.” He points, and Kairi notices the cottage nestled in the trees at the other side of the clearing. Its shape is just as distorted as the rest of the architecture in Wonderland; its windows curve like they were physically bent, and the front door is at at least a forty-five degree angle. She pushes open the door and steps through.

The interior of the cottage looks  _ nothing _ like the bizarre room. Parts of the floor are steeply slanted, and there’s no furniture except for a pair of raised platforms in the middle. “Are you sure this was the same room?” she calls back.

Sora follows her inside, frowning. “It definitely was before…” He looks up as the others follow him in and gasps. “I think we’re on the ceiling!”

Kairi looks upward. The ceiling of the room is decorated exactly like the floor of the bizarre room, with an upside-down table extending down. She can even see the pair of bottles on the underside, apparently unaffected by gravity. “This is so weird,” she mutters.

The Cheshire Cat appears again, on a ledge above the door they had entered through. “The shadows are hiding, safe out of sight,” he says. “If you want to find them, you should turn on the light.” He vanishes body-first, leaving the impression of his wide smile lingering in the air.

“Turn on the light?” Sora repeats. He wanders out into the room, looking around. 

A Soldier Heartless pops up in front of him, and he yelps, smacking it away with the Keyblade. It lands a few feet from Kairi, and she casts her new ice spell at it. A cloud of ice crystals surges from her palm and coats the Soldier, nearly immobilizing it at such a close range. She summons the Keyblade and bops the Heartless on the head, and it disintegrates.

“Oh, Sora,” she says. “Watch this.” She waits for him to look over, and then dismisses the Keyblade. 

He blinks when it doesn’t reappear anywhere. “Where did it go?” He holds out his hand, and the Keyblade appears with a flash of light. There’s a brief moment where he frowns at it, and then it disappears. He grins at Kairi. “How’d you figure that out?”

She shrugs. “Had a hunch.”

“It’s convenient,” he remarks. He stops under the edge of the raised platform. He jumps up, barely catching it, and hoists himself up with a grunt. “Hey, this looks like a lamp!”

“Really?” Kairi goes to the other raised platform and frowns at the edge, too far above her to jump. She looks back at Donald and Goofy. “Can one of you give me a boost…?”

Goofy joins her and kneels down so she can stand on his shield. He launches her up and she lands halfway on the platform. From there it’s easy enough to pull herself up. By the time she looks back over at Sora, he already has his lamp lit, with a fire burning merrily away inside the glass. She holds a hand over her own lamp and casts Fire. The lamp’s wick catches easily, and the Cheshire Cat appears on Sora’s lamp.

“The shadows are stirring, so excellent job,” he says. “Just keep an eye on that sleeping doorknob.” He disappears again before anyone can respond.

“Isn’t the doorknob at the bottom of the room?” Goofy asks. “How do we get back down there?”

“Maybe there’s a shortcut somewhere up here,” Alice says.

“Over there,” Kairi says, pointing. “That panel in the wall looks different from the others.”

The panel turns out to be a door, swinging upward like a trapdoor. Sora starts through it and then jerks backward. “It’s the courtroom again!” he whispers.

Kairi pokes her head through the door. It leads out onto the top of one of the hedges bordering the courtroom. She can see the Queen of Hearts fuming on top of her podium, with only a handful of card soldiers patrolling the area. Every few minutes, there’s a brief window of time when none of the cards are looking toward the path that leads back to the bizarre room. She pulls her head back in. “We can probably sneak past them, but we’ll have to be quick,” she whispers. “I’ll go first with Alice. Sora, Donald, Goofy, once we’ve gone, wait for the next opening. If we’re seen, you may need to come back us up. Got it?”

They all nod. Kairi creeps through the door, crouching on top of the hedge. Alice settles in next to her. “Follow my lead, and stay as quiet as you can,” she whispers, and Alice nods, looking pale.

The last card soldier turns away from the path, and Kairi jumps down. The same force that’s been slowing her fall since arriving in Wonderland kicks in, and she lands without a sound before sprinting down the path. She doesn’t stop until she’s rounded the corner and can see the bizarre room at the end. A second later, Alice stops next to her, breathing hard. Kairi gives her a smile, which she shakily returns.

There’s no commotion from the direction of the courtroom. They hadn’t been spotted.

A few minutes later, Sora, Goofy, and then Donald round the corner. Still no noise from the courtroom; Kairi gives them a thumbs-up and as a group they continue into the bizarre room.

Despite the Cheshire Cat’s cryptic words, nothing seems to be out of the ordinary in the room; the doorknob is even still snoring.

“Maybe we could see better if we stood on the table?” Donald suggests.

They clamber up onto the table, forming a loose circle and looking outward. Kairi stares into the shadows of the fireplace suspiciously. There’s no trace of movement that would betray any Heartless hiding within.

Alice screams behind her. Kairi whirls around, but Sora is already moving; the Keyblade materializes in his hand as he slashes at the Shadow Heartless that have popped up around Kairi. It’s then that all hell breaks loose: more Heartless appear around them, including the floaty fireproof ones, and  _ something  _ enormous drops from the ceiling. Kairi catches a glimpse of the Heartless emblem on the top of its head before it straightens to its full, towering height.

The new Heartless is probably ninety percent limb; its arms nearly reach the floor, and look like they’re made of crimped paper, while each leg is composed of two vertical halves that bend away from each other at the “knee”. What she had thought was its head looks more like an elongated top hat with no brim, with five segments in alternating pink and purple. Each segment sports an identical face. The rest of the Heartless is colored the same shades of pink and purple, with garishly bright yellow trim. Its feet, which curve into sharp-looking points, are the same neon yellow. It twirls a pair of striped juggling pins, one at the end of each arm, and bounces in place like it’s made of springs.

It lunges forward, swinging a pin up and around to send it hurtling toward them. Kairi dives out of the way, and the pin misses her by inches. An ice spell from Donald freezes the pin to the table, and Kairi takes the opportunity to call the Keyblade and hit the Heartless’ arm as hard as she can. It doesn’t even seem to react, and Kairi feels a brief tug in her hands before the Keyblade disappears.

“Don’t bother trying to hit its arms!” she yells.

“You guys handle the big one!” Sora says. He bashes a Shadow with the Keyblade. “I’ve got Alice!”

He coats a trio of the red floating Heartless in ice, and they drop to the ground. He’s already whirling around to slash at another pair of Shadows by the time they dissolve into shadows. Behind him, Alice thrusts her spear at a Soldier in an attempt to keep it at bay.

Kairi grips her spear, staring up at the giant Heartless. She has a feeling this is going to suck without the Keyblade.

She casts Fire at it, only for it to raise a pin to block the spell. The pin catches fire, and the Heartless immediately uses it to set the other juggling pin alight. Then it goes right back to juggling, except now it’s juggling enormous bludgeoning pins that are  _ on fire. _

This is  _ definitely _ going to suck.

The Heartless slams its pin down on the table, and before it can pull back, Kairi freezes the pin to the table again. The fire, thankfully, goes out, and as the Heartless starts pulling on its trapped pin, the ice cracking, Kairi jumps onto it and starts running up its arm.

She ignores the shouts of alarm from the others on the table and uses one of the bends in the arm as a springboard, catapulting herself toward its torso. She drives her spear into the armorlike plating on its chest and hears it scream from what sounds like all five of its mouths. At least she can do damage at all with normal weapons; if that hadn’t worked, she would be disappointed and also probably falling right now. Her weight pulls the spear downward, ripping a jagged tear in the Heartless’ chest. With her other hand, she casts Fire into the hole, provoking another layered screech.

The Heartless sinks down to the floor, its legs folding outward. Goofy uses the opportunity to leap down from above, slamming his shield into its head as Donald sprays it with ice. Kairi’s grip on her spear fails, and she drops to the ground with it still embedded into the Heartless’ chest. Before she can jump up to try and grab it again, it shakes itself out of its stunned stupor and rises into the air again. 

Kairi gets to spend the next several minutes while her magic reserves regenerate dodging juggling pins, one of which is still on fire, while Donald and Goofy are stuck clinging to the Heartless’ head as it spins and twirls around the room.

“Kairi!” Sora shouts from the top of the table. He and Alice are peering over the edge, apparently finished with the smaller Heartless. “Get it to fall over again!”

“I’m working on it!” she shouts back. Trying to do anything is a little difficult when she doesn’t have a weapon anymore and her opponent has an insane reach. She sends an ice spell toward the Heartless’ feet and stifles an irritated scream when it lifts its foot out of the way, leaving a patch of ice on the floor.

Out of ideas, she summons the Keyblade and throws it as hard as she can at the Heartless. Her aim is a little off, and it sinks into its shoulder before blinking away. Seconds later, it comes sailing through the air again from the direction of the table, this time sinking into the Heartless’ chest. As it does, the Heartless’ foot comes back down onto the patch of ice.

The Heartless  _ genuinely _ slips on the patch of ice, like a banana peel in a cartoon. This is the best thing that’s happened to Kairi all day.

Its limbs flail wildly as it topples over, knocking over the table. Sora leaps into the air just as the table tips sideways, and Kairi sees Alice tumble down, landing clumsily but seemingly unharmed in the corner of the room. The Heartless hits the ground, and almost immediately after that Sora drops onto it Keyblade-first. It lets out one final keening wail, and wisps of shadow start rising from it as it goes limp.

Kairi jogs over to Sora as he slides down off of the dying Heartless’ chest and punches him in the arm. “You stole my kill, you jerk,” she says.

He shrugs helplessly. “You have dibs on the next one?” he offers. They grin at each other, and a ball of light blooms on the Heartless’ chest. The light changes color to the pink Kairi is used to seeing from Heartless and rises up, disappearing into the air as the rest of its body dissolves.

“Do you think those are actually people’s hearts?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe. They steal them, right?”

“Yeah.” Something bounces off the ground and comes to a stop at Kairi’s feet. There’s a hole in one end of it that looks like a thread might fit through it, and she can feel some kind of magic in it, so she tosses it to Sora.

There’s a yawn from the nearest wall, and Kairi looks over at the doorknob, which seems to have finally woken up. “What a racket,” it complains. “How’s a doorknob to get any sleep?”

It yawns again, the keyhole serving as its mouth opening wide. There’s a flash as something gleams inside, and as Kairi and Sora lean closer, the Keyblade in Sora’s hand gives an answering flash. It almost seems to pull Sora’s arm up until its tip is aimed at the doorknob’s mouth, and then it emits a thin beam of light directly into it. The inside of the doorknob’s mouth glows brightly, and there’s a clicking sound that seems to echo in Kairi’s mind instead of in the air before the glow fades as the mouth closes. Seemingly unbothered, the doorknob goes right back to sleep.

“What was  _ that _ ?” Donald asks.

“It sounded like something closed,” Kairi says.

“Well, I didn’t hear anything.”

“I heard it too,” Sora says. “That was  _ weird. _ ”

The doorknob lets out a loud snore, and something brightly color falls out of its mouth and hits the floor with a light  _ klink _ .

“That’s a gummi piece,” Goofy says, stepping forward to pick it up. “Looks like a rare one, too.”

“Rare?” Kairi asks.

“Yup. Could be something like a navigation gummi. We should ask Cid when we go back to Traverse Town.”

“Hang on,” Sora says. “Where’s Alice?”

Kairi’s heart plunges into her stomach. The corner where she had seen Alice land is empty - no, almost empty. On the floor with no trace of their owner lie Alice’s headband and the spear Kairi had given her, broken in half. Alice herself has vanished without a trace.

“She’s gone,” says the Cheshire Cat just above her, and she jumps. The Cat is reclined on the wall, defying gravity. “Off with the shadows, into darkness.”

“Gone?” Sora repeats. “We went through all that trouble, and she disappears as soon as we turn around?”

“Denizens of the darkness are adept at going unseen,” the Cheshire Cat says. “But play your cards right and you may see her again.” He disappears, and Kairi realizes he hadn’t even been rhyming.

She drops to her knees and picks up the spear and the headband. There’s no other sign that Alice was ever there. Something hard and painful lodges itself in Kairi’s chest, and she just wants to curl up and cry.

“We’ll find her again,” Sora says. He holds out his hand to help her to her feet. “Her and Riku. We just need to keep looking.”

She doesn’t let go of his hand until they reach the first room. The ceiling has disappeared, revealing the deep hole they had fallen down upon entering Wonderland.

Goofy voices what everyone else is thinking. “So, uh, how do we get back up?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP Alice but hey she stabbed a heartless a couple times. Good job Alice, too bad the plot demands your sacrifice.
> 
> Also I was definitely just thinking "god kairi is pulling some ninja ass bullshit" the entire time I was writing the Trickmaster fight. It was a fun time.
> 
> I was gonna wait until Saturday to post this and try to get a biweekly update schedule going but... I was bored, so here it is a couple days early. I'll try to have the next one up by two weeks from this Saturday probably. It's almost done as of right now but I've got four midterms in a single week between now and then to study for and I've been kind of burned out lately from the last string of midterms so who knows. 
> 
> Next time: another talking animal, but like, only half.


	3. Clouded Skies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sora and Kairi enter a tournament to test their skills and continue their search for Riku - or at least, they try to. Sora shows off. Kairi does some light espionage. Cloud beats up a pair of teenagers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well that sure was an accidental hiatus

The large rectangular building rising in front of them has a massive doorway framed by columns, with twin thunderbolts etched into the doors themselves. The columns in turn are framed by two massive statues, wearing armor and shields and crossing their swords above the door.

“Wow, fancy place,” Sora says. “I wonder who lives here?”

“I don’t think anybody does,” Jiminy pipes up from his nest in Sora’s hood. “Not full time, anyway. This place is Olympus Coliseum, a grand arena where warriors prove their strength.”

“Awesome,” Sora breathes, gazing up at the door.

“By fighting?” Kairi asks.

“That is how coliseums tend to work,” Goofy points out.

“Riku would love this,” she says.

“Maybe he’s here!” Sora exclaims. “Come on, let’s go check it out!”

“Low profile, Sora!” Donald yells, panicked, but Sora is already marching up toward the doors. Kairi hurries after him, not about to let him find Riku without her. She hears Donald mutter something angrily behind her, and then the sound of footsteps as the two of them follow.

The doors turn out to be smaller than they looked, and Kairi is reminded briefly of the brain-twisting architecture of Wonderland. She follows Sora into a small, bare antechamber. On the other side, near an open doorway with a sign reading “CLOSED” hanging in the middle, a short, rotund figure with the horns and lower half of (probably) a goat stands on a small pedestal. The goat-man is peering at a sign on the wall, muttering to itself.

Sora looks over at Kairi. His mouth twists in a silent question, and she gestures toward the goat-man. He rolls his eyes and steps toward it. “Um…” he begins. “Excuse-”

“Perfect timing,” the goat-man says, not even turning around. “Give me a hand, will ya? Move that pedestal there for me?” He gestures loosely toward a heavy-looking block of stone to Kairi’s right. “I gotta spruce this place up for the games.”

_ Games? _ Sora mouths to Kairi. She shrugs and goes to investigate the pedestal. Tapping on it tells her pretty quickly that the thing is solid rock. She gives it a push, and unsurprisingly it doesn’t move. “There’s no way we can move this,” she says.

“What? Since when have you been such a little -” The goat-man turns around and sees Sora and Kairi for the first time. “Oh. What’re a couple of kids like you doing in here? I ain’t got time to be giving tours.”

“Can you call us kids if we’re like, twice your height?” Sora wonders.

“For that comment, I absolutely can. What do you want? This is the world-famous Coliseum - heroes only.” The goat-man hops down from the pedestal and makes his way across the room to the block of stone. Kairi moves out of the way as he positions himself next to it. “I got my hands full preparing for the games, so move-along, pipsqueaks.”

“Pipsqueaks!?” Sora protests.

When nobody shows any sign of leaving the antechamber, the goat-man sighs. “Look, it’s like this. Heroes are coming from all over to fight ferocious monsters right here in the Coliseum.”

“Monsters?” Kairi asks. “What kind of monsters?”

“Yeah, we’ve fought all kinds of monsters!” Sora adds.

“They’re real heroes chosen by the Keyblade!” Goofy chimes in.

“Heroes?  _ These _ runts?” The goat-man bursts out laughing.

“You really don’t have any room to keep calling us small like this,” Kairi mutters.

“Listen, if you can’t even move this…” The goat-man starts pushing fruitlessly on the block of stone. “Then you can’t call yourself…” His hooves slip on the floor as he fails to even move the stone a fraction of an inch. “A hero!” He turns around and presses his back against it, trying to push it that way, and he slips to the ground, panting heavily.

Sora makes a noise that Kairi recognizes as him trying desperately to contain a giggle. The sound has her pressing her mouth shut to keep herself from laughing with him.

“Okay, so it takes more than brawn,” the goat-man says, pushing himself back up. “But how do I know you got what it takes?”

“We’ll prove it to you,” Kairi says. “Just give us that much.”

“Fine,” the goat-man says. “Show me what you got, and I’ll consider it. Wait here a minute.”

He ducks under the “CLOSED” sign, leaving the four of them alone in the room, and Donald rounds on Sora and Kairi.

“Do  _ neither _ of you know the meaning of  _ low profile _ ?” he demands. He’s kind of hard to understand when he’s that angry.

“He said people are coming to fight monsters here!” Kairi protests. “That could mean Heartless!”

“She’s got a point,” Goofy says.

“And Riku could be entering the games!” Sora says.

“So if we enter the games too, we’re guaranteed to be in a position to find him -”

“-  _ and _ take out Heartless while we’re at it!” Sora finishes. Kairi nods decisively.

Donald glowers at the two of them. Eventually he quacks, and Kairi is pretty sure there was a swear hidden in there because Goofy gives him a Look. “Fine,” he says. “But don’t cause any more of a scene than you already are!”

“Hey hero-wannabes!” the goat-man calls from beyond the “CLOSED” doorway. “Get out here!”

Both of them bolt for the doorway, Kairi vaulting neatly over the rope while Sora slides under it. She can hear Donald muttering darkly again behind them.

They emerge from the long hallway into a vast open area, with rows of bleachers on either side. The ground beneath their feet is packed dirt, and in front of them stretches a complex obstacle course dotted with wooden barrels balanced on platforms. The goat-man stands in front of the obstacle course with his arms crossed.

“Alright, the objective here is simple,” he says. “Knock every barrel in the course off its platform under the time limit. Do that, and you pass. Don’t, and you fail.”

“Got it,” Sora says.

He points at Kairi. “You first. Get going.”

“But - what’s the time limit?”

“You think you’re gonna be told how long you have for things in real hero business? No! Get going!”

Kairi gets going.

The first barrel is right by the entrance, and she kicks it over as she passes it. It’s easy enough to clamber up ledges and squeeze through tiny gaps, though as she continues the barrels get more and more tricky to knock over. One is completely unreachable, sitting on top of the tallest column in the course, and she hurls the Keyblade at it, striking true. The barrel topples over and hits another barrel on the way down; after that Kairi looks for ways to knock over more and more barrels at once.

Eventually she stumbles out of the exit of the obstacle course, breathing hard. The Keyblade vanishes from her grip as she leans over, hands on her knees.

The goat-man gives her an appraising look. “Not bad for a newbie. Take a breather and I’ll reset the course.”

He goes into the obstacle course, quickly disappearing from sight in the maze of walls and pillars.

“That was awesome!” Sora says. “When you knocked over the one on top he was really surprised you got that far.”

“He’s kind of rude,” she says quietly, glancing back at the course to make sure he’s not in earshot.

Sora shrugs. “He’s probably just really stressed and busy.” He grins. “Hey, make sure you watch that top barrel when it’s my turn.”

“You got it.”

The goat-man emerges from the course and Kairi looks back up at the top barrel, frowning. How had he gotten it back up without her noticing anything?

“You,” he says, pointing at Sora. “You’re up, get going.”

Sora sprints into the obstacle course and Kairi watches intently, using the sounds of Sora hitting barrels to try to track his progress and counting the seconds in her head. At thirty-eight, something flies up out of the course toward the top barrel - but it’s not the Keyblade. It’s  _ another barrel _ .

Kairi laughs to herself, watching the two barrels tumble down and knock a third off of its perch. “Show-off.”

“Impressive,” Goofy remarks.

At fifty-four seconds, Sora emerges from the course. “So?” he asks the goat-man, panting. “How’d I do?”

“Acceptable,” he says, looking down at a clipboard he’s produced from nowhere. “The girl was faster.”

“Ha!” Kairi says. Sora sticks his tongue out at her.

“Can we sign up for the games now?” he asks the goat-man.

“No.”

“Why not!?”

“Two words,” the goat-man says. “You two ain’t heroes.”

Kairi blinks. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Goofy counting the words on his fingers. “That was four -”

“That’s not fair!” Sora objects. “You said if we did well on the obstacle course you’d let us enter the games!”

“I said I’d  _ consider _ it, and I have,” the goat-man says. “You’re too green. The games would eat you alive.”

“But -”

“Not to mention, by the looks of it you’ve only got one weapon between you! Unacceptable.”

“We do just fine passing it back and forth,” Kairi says.

“Sorry, kid, that’s my answer and it’s final.” The goat-man pulls a roll of papers out from… somewhere. Kairi doesn’t really want to think about it. He hands them to Sora. “You wanna be a hero? Start by mastering this. Maybe you can enter the next games. Now scram, I’m behind schedule on prep because of this.”

The goat-man goes back to ignoring them and starts dismantling the obstacle course.

\---

The papers turn out to be a spell for channeling lightning. In the entrance courtyard, Kairi reads out tips on the steps of the Coliseum for Sora, who is complaining loudly in between attempts to cast the spell.

“We even fought that  _ giant _ Heartless -  _ Thunder! _ \- and we kicked its ass! What a jerk!  _ Thunder! _ Ugh, damn it.” He collapses dramatically on the ground. “We’ve been out here for like, a day.”

“An hour, tops,” Donald says.

“We’re never gonna be able to get into those games and find Riku.”

“I thought I saw a spark that time,” Kairi says. “You might be putting too much fire energy into the spell. These notes are way too technical, though. I can’t figure anything out. And they keep mentioning some guy named Zeus.”

Sora pouts up at the sky. “This is dumb.” He holds up one hand, and Kairi feels the hair on her arms stand on end. “ _ Thunder! _ ”

There’s a loud sizzling noise and a bright flash as a jagged streak of light comes down from the sky, splitting apart above Sora’s head and hitting the ground in a loose circle around him. There’s a very loud, very startled quack from Donald, and Goofy shoots to his feet, shield at the ready. Sora just stares at his hand in awe.

Kairi focuses on one of the braziers at the other end of the courtyard. If she remembers what it felt like just before the spell activated, and reaches for that feeling with her magic… “ _ Thunder!” _

There’s another zapping noise, and the resulting flash briefly blinds Kairi as a single bolt comes crashing down on the brazier. When her vision clears, it’s been reduced to a smoking wreck of twisted metal.

Sora jumps to his feet. “YES!”

Kairi grins, and then slumps. “He still said we have to  _ master _ it to enter the games, though.”

“Another pair of glory seekers looking to enter the games, eh?” says a smooth voice from just behind Kairi. She yelps and leaps forward, landing next to Sora, who steadies her when she fumbles the landing. Donald and Goofy scramble to their feet, weapons at the ready.

“Who are you?” Donald demands.

“Whoa whoa whoa, hold it, fuzzball.” The voice belongs to a tall, gaunt man with unhealthy-looking grayish skin and flickering blue flames instead of hair. He steps forward with a glint in his eyes that Kairi doesn’t trust. “You want to enter the games, right?”

“What’s it to you?” she asks.

He leans down, and Kairi can see that his teeth look like they’re about to rot out of his mouth. “Get a load of this.” He holds up a hand with spindly fingers that are way too long, and a rectangular piece of paper appears in it. “What do you think, huh?”

“Is that… a pass for the games?” Sora asks.

“And it’s all yours,” the man says, pushing it into Sora’s hands. He straightens and saunters away. “Good luck, kiddies,” he calls back over his shoulder. “I’m pullin’ for ya.”

Kairi reads the pass over Sora’s shoulder. It supposedly qualifies a team of four to compete in the games, but... “Why would he just give us the pass?”

“Maybe he really is rootin’ for you, like he said,” Goofy says.

“No way,” Donald says, shaking his head emphatically. “This is too suspicious.”

Sora frowns. “Even if this is some kind of trap, it’s our best shot at finding Heartless and looking for Riku.”

“There’s no rules against pulling out, are there?” Kairi asks. “If it gets too tough, we can just withdraw. We just need to get in so we can investigate.”

“I don’t like this,” Donald huffs.

“You don’t like it when we do anything,” Sora points out.

“Exactly, you’re both too reckless.”

“It can’t hurt to see if this pass will let us in,” Goofy says.

“Yeah, let’s go back in!” Sora says. “We even learned that new spell, he’ll have to let us participate!”

He strides through the doors and proudly hands the pass to the goat-man, who looks surprised to see them back so soon. He takes the pass and scans it. “Where did you get this?”

“Can we enter the games?”

“Technically, yes, because you  _ somehow _ have a legitimate pass, but ethically? Absolutely not.” The goat-man crosses his arms. “I’m guessin’ you still only have the one weapon.”

“Could you loan us some others?” Kairi asks. “We  _ really _ need to participate in the games.”

The goat-man gives her a skeptical look, and Kairi widens her eyes pleadingly. After a few moments, the goat-man throws up his hands. “Argh! Fine! Come with me.” He stomps off into the hallway leading out to the arena.

Sora gives her a high five. “The puppy eyes work every time,” he tells Donald and Goofy proudly.

They follow the goat-man into a side chamber just before the hallway opens into the arena. The walls are lined with weapons that put Cid’s closet stockpile to shame, and the blades are so highly polished that Kairi is pretty sure a stray beam of sunshine would light the room up like a Christmas tree.

Sora picks up a thick wooden staff leaning by the doorway, capped with thin sheets of bronze on the ends. It looks like it has some serious weight to it, especially when he starts swinging it around. Growing confident, Sora tries to twirl it in his hand only to almost drop it. He comically juggles it in both hands for a few seconds before regaining his grip, and Kairi stifles a giggle before moving further into the room.

She can hear Sora brainstorming how exactly to flick his wrist to twirl the staff, and tunes him out as she scans the rows of weapons. She sees a line of short spears not unlike the ones Cid had given her, but swinging them around experimentally doesn’t quite seem right, so she moves on.

Her eyes fall on a long dagger with a gleaming point. The blade looks to be about the length of her forearm when she picks it up, and the motion dislodges an identical dagger - this one in a nondescript leather sheath - nearly hidden behind the first. She snatches it from the air before it can fall and knock over the other weapons on the rack. With one blade in each hand, she gets the same gut feeling she had for the spears from Cid: these are right.

She turns back and sees Sora adjusting a strap attached to both ends of the staff, presumably so that he can sling it over his shoulder when it’s not in use.

“Alright,” the goat-man says. “Get back out there and show me what you can do.”

“Wait, with the barrels again?”

“No way I’m letting a couple of kids like you enter the games without knowing you can handle them!”

Goofy clears his throat. “I don’t mean to interrupt, mister…”

“Philoctetes. Just call me Phil.”

“Phil,” Goofy continues. “But we can vouch for them.”

Phil sighs. “Look, no offense, but I don’t know them and I don’t know you. I gotta see their skills before I’m comfortable letting them participate in a combat tournament.”

Sora opens his mouth to object and Kairi cuts him off. “That sounds fair,” she says. “But if you wanted to see our combat skills, maybe you should have given us something besides an obstacle course where we’re hidden from view most of the time.”

“Yeah, well, that was before you had a pass,” Phil grumbles.

He doesn’t make them wait for an obstacle course this time; instead he just sets out barrels at random points across the arena. “Break a few of those and I’ll see where you’re at.”

“Just break the barrels?” Kairi asks. She’d be at a disadvantage with the knives, compared to Sora’s heavy staff.”

“Break ‘em, stab holes in ‘em, whatever you think will demonstrate skill. The sooner you do this, the sooner we can move on.”

Sora shrugs and swings the staff off his back. Kairi pulls her knives from their sheathes, turning them over in her hands to find a grip she’s comfortable with before advancing on the first barrel.

She stabs it and jumps back with a yelp as sand starts pouring out of it. She guesses it’s there to simulate blood pouring out of a wound, but none of the barrels in the obstacle course had had sand in them; where did the sand come from? Did Phil have them filled in advance, or did he do it specifically for this? She’s beginning to suspect he just acts ornery with no substance behind it.

The next two barrels are both empty, so after the first stab she just kicks each one over. She’s approaching the fourth when she hears Donald shout from the sidelines.

“Heartless!”

Kairi skids to a halt, kicking up dust as she looks around for the Heartless. A group of Soldiers and Red Nocturnes have appeared in the stands on Sora’s side of the arena, closest to Donald and Goofy. On her side, one massive round Heartless is flanked by a pair of Soldiers. So they  _ are _ on this world.

She charges the fat one, planning to take it out quickly. She stabs it in the center of its belly, only for the dagger to bounce back out without leaving any marks as the Heartless recoils. It swings its arms clumsily and she ducks, scrambling backward to avoid the heavy manacles attached to its wrists. The Soldiers clatter after her, and it’s easy enough to wear them down with her daggers before summoning the Keyblade to finish them off. Now she just has to deal with the fat one.

It lumbers toward her faster than she expects, and she dodge rolls out of the way, retreating toward the stands. She lets the Keyblade disappear as Sora calls it back.

“Kairi!” Jiminy yells. She sees him jumping up and down just a few feet away, trying to get her attention - she had ended up close enough to be able to hear him. “That’s a Large Body! Its front is armored, but its back is vulnerable! You need to get behind it!”

“Noted!” she says. The Large Body lurches toward her again, and she dives out of the way and starts leading it away from the stands. She’s thankful that she’s at least nimble enough to stay out of the way of its strikes, far back enough to give her time to plan an angle of attack. There’s not enough room under it to slide through its legs, and it’s too big to leap over. It turns too quickly for her to simply run around behind it. She needs to stun it somehow. Maybe the recoil from hitting it in the front…

Kairi faces the Large Body and plants her feet, summoning the Keyblade. The Large Body lumbers forward until it looms over her, raising its fists to slam down on top of her. Kairi slashes the Keyblade across its front and it reels back, windmilling its arms slightly.

She sprints around its side, grabbing its arm to use as an anchor to pivot around, and drives the Keyblade into its exposed back. The Large Body goes stiff before it sinks like a punctured balloon, dissolving away into oozing shadows and a bright heart that drifts into the sky.

She lands in a defensive stance, straightening when no more Heartless appear and resting the Keyblade on her shoulder. She feels like she’s copying Leon. “So,” she says to Phil, who seems to have just stood gaping at the fight. “Are we good enough for the games?”

“Yeah, you gotta admit we were awesome!” Sora adds.

Phil recovers and crosses his arms. “You’re pretty good,” he says. Kairi waits for his next excuse to get them to quit. “But your opponents to qualify for the games are gonna be bigger and badder.”

“We can handle it no problem,” Sora says.

The sound of boots crunching across the sand draws Kairi’s attention back to the hallway coming from the antechamber. Emerging from the shadows is a tall man with spiked blond hair, wearing dark clothes and a tattered red cloak with a clawed gauntlet on his left hand. An enormous sword that looks more like a scaled-up chopping knife is strapped across his back. He turns to look at them as he passes, a cold blue stare that fills Kairi with icy dread.

After what feels like an eternity, the moment passes. The swordsman looks away and continues his slow walk to the other end of the arena, disappearing into another darkened hallway.

“Who… who was that?” Sora asks.

“One of the other competitors in the preliminaries,” Phil says. “You’re sure you still want to do this?”

Kairi glances at Sora. They already know there are Heartless here, and participating in the games could lure out even more of them.

Sora’s mouth twists. Heartless, and whoever that swordsman was. His sword looks nasty, and the idea of actively seeking out fights at this point is a little daunting.

She shrugs. They’ve done a lot of dangerous stuff recently, and maybe they can find Riku.

He glances back toward where the swordsman disappeared, but then nods.

“We’re sure,” Kairi says. “We can handle it.”

Phil looks skeptical. “Just don’t come crying to me when you bite off more than you can chew.”

\---

Kairi pins the last Soldier to the ground with one of her knives, and Sora destroys it and the Heartless flying above it in a single strike. He tosses her knife back, and she catches it easily, slipping it back into its sheath.

“Not bad, not bad at all,” Phil says. “I wish he was here to see this.”

“He?” Sora asks.

“Hercules,” Phil says. “Now he’s a real hero if there ever was one. He’s off visiting his father.”

“Oh. He sounds cool.”

“He is. Now, you’ve got a few minutes until the next match, so take a breather for a bit.”

Kairi takes a seat next to Sora in the front row of the stands, digging an ether out of her pockets. Having a spell like Thunder under her belt is useful, but draining. As she takes a swig, she notices a flicker of blue light in one of the carved windows at the other end of the arena. It almost looks like fire.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she lies. “I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t get lost,” Sora says.

She nods and crosses the arena, entering the dark hallway. It’s lined with doorways into what seems like some kind of barracks, and she wonders if this where people stay when they travel for the games.

She tracks down the room where she had seen the blue light, and can hear quiet voices coming from behind the door. It’s hanging slightly ajar, so she leans up against it, listening closely.

“-god of the Underworld is afraid of a couple of kids?” says a voice. “Sorry, but my contract says-”

“I know, I  _ wrote _ the damn contract!” snaps a second. She recognizes this one; it’s the tall creepy guy who gave her and Sora the pass for the games. “I know you’re only required to kill Hercules in this tournament, but you gotta fight those kids to get to him!”

There’s a long silence. The ‘god of the Underworld’ wants to kill the hero Phil had mentioned? That… tracks, actually. He seems sinister enough to want to take down a hero. She realizes with a sudden chill that the god is acting like her and Sora entering the games had been a surprise. Does that mean he wants  _ them _ dead, too? They hadn’t even been on this world for a day!

“Come on,” he continues. “It’s like that old goat says - rule eleven: it’s all just a game, so let loose and have fun with it! A casualty or two along the way is no big deal, right?” He chuckles darkly, and Kairi forces down a sudden jolt of terror. Distracted, she accidentally pushes on the door, and it swings further open with a creak.

_ Shit. _

“What was that?” the god asks. She hears the rustle of fabric moving closer to the door.

_ Double shit. _ She jumps back just before the door is thrown open all the way.

“And  _ what _ are you doing back here?” he snarls.

Kairi gulps. “Um…. Looking for the bathroom?” she tries. “I, uh, got a little lost. Haha, sorry, I’m not really familiar with the layout of - of the coliseum, you know? Sorry if I interrupted-”

The flames on the god’s head turn a vivid, menacing crimson. “You  _ eavesdropping little _ -”

“Hades,” the first voice interrupts, making the god stop with his hand raised. Kairi glances back into the room; it’s the swordsman who showed up earlier.

“ _ What _ ,” Hades growls.

“Harm her and I withdraw from the contract.”

Hades scoffs; the flames fade back to blue. “Oh, please, you  _ need _ me.”

“I can find my answers elsewhere,” the swordsman says. “You were just convenient.”

There’s a brief staredown; even faced with an angry god, the swordsman doesn’t blink, and Kairi is  _ so _ grateful he came to her defense. And also insanely impressed.

Hades looks away first. “Fine,” he snaps. He glares back down at Kairi, and she barely forces herself to not flinch away. “Don’t think you’re off the hook, kiddie.” He stalks away in a swirl of black robes and blue fire.

Kairi exhales shakily. “Thank you.”

The swordsman shakes his head. “He won’t let something like this go. You’re a target now.”

“I think I already was,” she says. “He’s the one who gave me and Sora the pass to enter the games.”

She thinks she sees his eyes widen. “He was acting like-”

“Like he wasn’t expecting us? He was lying.” Kairi crosses her arms.

The swordsman curses under his breath. “He was probably lying about everything else, then.”

“Why would you agree to kill Hercules?”

“He has information I want. But, considering recent revelations, I don’t think I’ll go through with it. A contract made in bad faith is useless, anyway.”

“What are you going to do instead?” Kairi asks.

“I’ll still fight in the games,” he says, and Kairi’s heart sinks; she doesn’t want to fight him even if he won’t be trying to kill her. “For myself, not in order to fulfill the contract. I’ll measure my skills against the fighters here, then I’ll move on.”

“Kairi!” She turns and sees him silhouetted in the doorway to the arena. “Come on, we’re up again!”

“Go ahead,” the swordsman says. “Make sure you don’t lose before our match.”

“Same to you,” Kairi says over her shoulder as she jogs to meet Sora.

“Not a chance,” she hears as she steps back out into the arena.

Sora must notice her lingering jitters, because he gives her a weird look. “You didn’t actually have to pee, did you?” he says.

“I’ll fill you in later,” she says. “But for now, if the guy who gave us the pass shows up again, don’t trust him.”

“Okaaaay,” he says slowly. “Already didn’t, but good to know. Let’s kick some Heartless ass.”

\---

They don’t lose any of their next matches. Neither does the swordsman. They face each other at either end of the arena as the swordsman pulls his giant sword off his back. It’s wrapped in bandages, which seems impractical to Kairi, but she’s not about to criticize his weapon care when he’s confident enough to stare down a god and win.

“I never got your name,” she says.

“Cloud Strife,” the swordsman replies. “Good luck. You’ll need it.”

“Don’t go easy on us,” Sora says.

Cloud smirks. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

He  _ moves _ , and in the time it takes for Kairi to blink he’s already on top of them, raising his sword for a downward strike. She rolls to the side and hears it sink into the ground. Cloud pulls it out easily, lifting the massive blade like it weighs nothing.

She exchanges a look with Sora, who grabs his staff. The Keyblade blinks into her hands, and they charge forward as one.

He parries both strikes almost casually, catching the Keyblade with his sword and the staff with his gauntleted hand. He twists the staff sharply, throwing Sora off balance, and swings his sword around for another strike. The sudden lack of resistance under the Keyblade has Kairi stumbling forward, and even as Sora dodges out of the way and the sword lands Cloud is kicking her feet out from under her. She swipes at his ankles and he sidesteps neatly away from the Keyblade.

She casts Blizzard on the sword before he can lift it again, freezing it to the ground. Cloud strains against the ice, and Kairi can see it cracking from the force.

She gets to her feet as Sora rushes forward from the other side, and Cloud is forced to let go of his sword to block the strike. Kairi charges in swinging and Cloud catches the Keyblade in his other hand.

He crosses his arms, slamming Kairi and Sora into each other. With her free hand, Kairi pulls out one of her knives and aims for the arm holding the Keyblade. He can either block it, letting go of Sora’s staff and potentially leaving himself open for another attack, or take a knife to the arm and have to deal with an injury for the rest of the fight.

He drops the staff and grabs Kairi’s wrist, stopping the knife inches from his arm. Sora immediately swings again with his staff, and at the same time Kairi releases the Keyblade and casts Blizzard again on the ground under Cloud’s feet. As the Keyblade disappears from Cloud’s hand he whirls around to block the staff again, and Kairi uses the inertia and his grip on her wrist to throw him further off balance. She kicks at his ankles, and he goes down - and carries her with him, throwing her over his head and sending her flying.

She lands hard and rolls, stirring up dust. By the time she gets back to her feet, Cloud has thrown Sora across the arena too and is pulling his sword free of the ice.

Now Cloud is on the offensive, surging forward in a rush of air that almost seems to propel him on its own. Kairi only narrowly dodges, and he surges forward again, forcing her to dive to the side. The third time she’s too slow, and he swings the blade around to catch her in the stomach with its blunt top edge. The impact knocks the wind out of her and she sinks to the ground, dazed and struggling to breathe.

He focuses on Sora, striking so quickly it’s all Sora can do to block and dodge. He lands hits with the blunt edge a few times, and Kairi is tempted to call him out on going easy on them except for the realization that if he had been using the sharp end of his blade, he would have cut her in half. Besides, even if he is pulling his punches, he’s also kicking their asses.

Sora casts a focused Thunder, and the spell lands just in front of Cloud, missing him by inches. Sora rolls backward and Cloud lets him. He lands next to Kairi and presses a small bottle into her hand - a potion.

Cloud rests his sword on his shoulder. He doesn’t even look winded. “Done yet?”

Kairi shakes her head.

“Absolutely not,” Sora says.

Cloud smirks again. He’s  _ enjoying _ the fight. “Good.” He lowers his blade and does that surging move again. Kairi catches what looks like ripples of energy in the air behind him before dodging out of the way.

A Blizzard from Sora coats Cloud’s left side in frost moments before Sora himself is there, swinging his staff. With the ice slowing his movements, Cloud is too slow to block, and the staff lands heavily on his shoulder. Kairi attacks from the other side, swinging a dagger first. Cloud blocks it with his sword, and as Kairi swings her other hand forward she calls the Keyblade to it. It appears in her hand just before her swing connects, slamming the Keyblade into Cloud’s back, and she hears him grunt.

Cloud lunges forward, putting himself out of reach of their weapons. He angles his blade, getting ready to surge forward again-

An enormous black mass slams down on top of him.

It’s a giant paw, connected to a giant monster with three dog heads. Each head looks like a vicious dog from a movie, three mouths snarling full of gleaming sharp teeth and dripping viscous saliva. Unlike a dog from a movie, the mouths are also emitting curls of black smoke, and six hateful red eyes are focused on Kairi and Sora.

Kairi catches a flicker of blue and follows the movement - Hades is standing in the corner of the arena, nearly hidden in the shadows. He meets her eyes and smiles, showing pointed and yellowed teeth, before disappearing in a burst of blue flame.

Sora’s hand closes on her wrist and drags her backward as one of the heads shoots forward, its jaws snapping shut around the space where her head had just been. All three heads descend, snarling, and then - they go back up? No, the  _ entire dog _ is being lifted off its front feet, by a strong-looking man with red hair and a short blue cape.

“Herc!” Phil yells.

Herc? As in Hercules?

“Phil, get them out of here!” Herc shouts. He grunts with the effort of forcing the dog backward.

“You heard him, kids, MOVE!” Phil yells.

Kairi does move - forward. She ducks under the dog’s swinging paw and grabs Cloud’s arms, straining to drag him away. He’s too heavy; even pulling as hard as she can she can only move him a fraction of an inch.

“I’ve got him!” Hercules says. “You need to get out of here, it’s too dangerous!”

Sora joins her, taking one of Cloud’s arms and pulling with her. “Not a chance!” he says. “Not while we can do stuff to help!”

Together, the two of them manage to haul Cloud a couple more feet toward the sidelines. He seems to be still alive, thankfully, but unconscious. Donald and Goofy each grab a leg when they get far enough away from the dog, and with a burst of strength Kairi is pretty sure came mostly from Goofy, they get Cloud out of the arena entirely.

“Okay, great, you rescued the guy, now  _ get outta here! _ ” Phil orders.

Lifting Cloud between the four of them, they carry him back into the antechamber with Phil ushering them along. As they set him down against the wall, Kairi hears the sound of roaring and muffled explosions.

Phil starts pacing nervously. “That was too close,” he says.

“What was that thing?” Kairi asks.

“Cerberus,” Phil answers. “The guardian of the Underworld. Herc should be able to handle him.” Even as he says it, he doesn’t look very convinced. “This doesn’t look good,” he mutters.

Kairi meets Sora’s eyes, and he nods. She stands up and the two of them head for the hallway. “Then we’ll go help him.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Phil almost scrambles to block the way. “This ain’t just some match, this is for real!”

“Yeah, and we’ve already fought a bunch of monsters,  _ for real _ ,” Sora says. “Besides, it’s not like we’re gonna be fighting him alone if Hercules is out there. We just want to lend a hand.”

Phil looks like he’s trying to come up with another reason to not let them pass. Finally, he sighs. “Alright.” He steps aside, and Kairi and Sora break into a run with Donald and Goofy hot on their heels. “I got three words of advice!” he calls after them. “Don’t die!”

“Technically three words,” Sora mutters, just loud enough for Kairi to hear. “If you squint.”

They emerge into the arena to see Hercules cornered by Cerberus on the other side. Kairi puts two of her fingers in her mouth and lets out a piercing whistle, and all three of Cerberus’ heads shoot up, whipping around to find the source of the noise.

“Hey!” Sora shouts. Cerberus starts to turn around, and Hercules darts away in the other direction. Sora summons the Keyblade, so Kairi readies her daggers. “You’re being a  _ very bad dog! _ ”

Cerberus arches its back as its middle head starts making a horrible hacking, retching noise. Remembering how cats look when they’re coughing up hairballs, Kairi is already dodging out of the way when the middle head spits what looks like a solid sphere of fire where she had been standing. It hits the ground and sort of splatters, with blobs of something molten scattering across the ground and smoldering.

Kairi watches Cerberus carefully, ready to move again. One head is watching Donald and Goofy, with the other two watching her and Sora. While he’s distracted, Hercules grabs him by the leg and tosses him to the side like a sack of flour.

“Any useful tips?” she asks him as Cerberus flails around.

“Uh, yeah,” he says. “Avoid the mouths.”

“Great.”

Cerberus finds its feet and snarls at them, towering over them once more as all six beady eyes focus on Hercules. It seems to have gotten the idea that he’s the biggest threat.

Kairi will just have to prove it wrong.

“Try to distract it!” she says, already running toward Sora. “I have an idea!”

Sora looks up from where he’s trying to ice over what looks like a nasty burn on his arm. “Please tell me it’s something good.”

“We need to keep Cerberus from moving and from spitting whatever that fireball was at us,” she says. “Ice might work, but it also might just melt.”

“Could we paralyze him with Thunder?” Sora asks.

“Maybe. I’m thinking we blind him. Can’t hit what he can’t see.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Sora points out. “Still a good idea.”

“We’ll help Hercules distract him,” Goofy says. “You two get to work.”

“Find some way to keep him stuck in one place,” Kairi says.

As if on cue, there’s a thundering crash as Hercules presumably tosses Cerberus across the arena again. The four of them disperse, and Sora and Kairi start making their way around the edges of the arena. 

“Do you want to pick a head first?” Kairi asks.

“Does it matter?” Sora asks. “But left.”

“Then I’ll go for the right,” she says. “The middle head can only attack one of us at a time.”

They have to climb halfway up the stands just to be level with Cerberus’ back. Sora leaps, hanging in the air for an impossibly long time, and lands easily. Kairi falls short and has to climb clumsily up Cerberus’ tail onto his back.

Cerberus immediately begins twisting around, like a wet dog trying to shake itself dry. Kairi slips, snatching frantically at the dog’s fur until she finds purchase. By the time she pulls herself back up, Sora is up near the left head, Keyblade in hand. She runs forward over Cerberus’ back before she can lose her balance again. She can feel the muscles straining under her feet as it tries to lift a paw that must have been iced to the ground.

Kairi reaches the right neck as the middle head rears up and focuses on Sora, who is in the process of climbing over the top of Lefty and doesn’t seem to have noticed. She summons the Keyblade and chucks it at Middle. The head swings around to face her instead, its two eyes glowing like coals.

She grabs one of her daggers and throws it at Middle’s right eye. She’s gotten a lot of practice with throwing thanks to round after round of fighting Heartless, so her aim is true; the dagger plunges into the eye socket and the burning red light goes out.

Cerberus roars in pain, throwing all three heads back. Sora falls off with a yell, and Kairi just barely grabs hold of the wiry fur. Lefty and Middle turn all three eyes on her and Righty twists around uselessly, not flexible enough to crane its neck and spot her.

“Oh, did you not like that?” she asks. She calls the Keyblade back to her hand, and pulls out her second dagger with the other hand. “Come and get me, you mutt.”

Lefty and Middle rear up, jaws gaping, and a bright glow begins to build in each of their throats.

“Oh, right,” she says faintly. “Forgot about that.” She breaks into a run up Righty’s neck, increasingly aware of the rising temperatures just to her left. When she sees the flames licking at Lefty and Middle’s teeth, she dives to the side, catching the fur on the far side of Righty’s head and hoping the other two are stupid enough to release their fireballs anyway.

There’s a rush of searing heat and light, and Righty jerks sharply and lets out a deafening roar. She loses her grip, plummeting toward the ground - and falls into a very muscular pair of arms. Hercules carries her away from Cerberus and she twists around to look at the aftermath.

Righty is sagging limply, its left side reduced to a smoldering wreck of burned flesh. Its eyes are dark. Middle and Lefty rear up, looking incensed, and spit another pair of fireballs down at the ground, forcing the other three to scramble away from Cerberus’ feet.

They regroup on the opposite side of the arena as Hercules sets Kairi down. “Man, what kind of horrible hell dog isn’t immune to its own fireballs?” Sora wonders.

“Quit complaining,” Donald snaps. “Now we only have to deal with two heads.”

“Where did you learn how to fight like that?” Hercules asks.

“We’re, uh… self taught?” Kairi says.

Hercules blinks. “Really? No formal training at all?”

Kairi shakes her head as Sora says “Nope.”

Herc’s reply is interrupted by another roar, accompanied by the sound of breaking ice as Cerberus rips its paws free. It points its remaining heads down and starts spewing inky darkness from its mouths. Kairi feels bile rising in her throat and fights back the intense wave of nausea that hits her. It feels like a giant Heartless. The darkness oozes alarmingly fast across the ground toward them and bubbles ominously around their feet.

“Scatter!” Hercules orders.

They jump apart just as the darkness erupts into the air. The inky pool splits and follows each of them, and Kairi jumps back again. She starts running back toward Cerberus and casts Thunder. Twin bolts of electricity strike each head and Cerberus sinks to the ground, dazed. 

Sora runs up to the middle head with a pool of darkness hot on his heels and slashes at its remaining eye with the Keyblade. Middle roars as its eye is blinded and Lefty and lunges forward. Sora sticks the Keyblade into its mouth before its jaws can close and backs away hastily, calling the Keyblade back as soon as he’s out of reach of the teeth. “Two down!” he yells.

“Two? That’s one and a half, dummy!” Kairi calls.

“You do better!” he shouts at her.

“I already did!” she fires back. She dodges the pool of darkness beneath her feet again as it attempts to lash out at her before finally dispersing.

She charges Cerberus, weighing her options. Getting the heads to attack each other might not work again, and now the middle head is both blinded and furious. Her Blizzard isn’t powerful enough to freeze either head solid… but maybe it doesn’t need to. It just needs to bother Cerberus enough to get it to pause.

She stops in front of Cerberus and waits for it to bite. Lefty lunges forward and she jumps back, just out of reach. She casts Blizzard into its exposed teeth, right where they meet the gums.

Lefty jerks up sharply, whimpering. Cerberus backs away, pawing at its left mouth. Middle spits a fireball blindly and Kairi rolls out of the way. “Now!” she yells.

Donald lets out a garbled battle cry - maybe someday she’ll actually be able to understand everything he says - and charges, spraying Cerberus’ paws with ice to immobilize it.

“Hit it with lightning again!” Hercules yells.

Kairi exchanges a nod with Sora and they both cast Thunder. One bolt hits each head and Cerberus sinks down again, clearly wounded but still conscious. Hercules and Goofy charge past them and leap toward the two heads. Hercules brings his fists down on the middle head as Goofy’s shield slams into the left, and the heads go down.

When Cerberus doesn’t move again, Kairi sinks to the ground. Her arms and legs ache, and she feels slightly cooked. Sora flops down next to her.

“Do you have any potions left?” he asks.

She feels around in her pockets. “No,” she says. “Donald? Goofy?”

They both shake their heads, and Sora sighs. “I guess we’re stocking up back in Traverse Town.” He pushes himself into a sitting position, wincing. His arm still looks burned. He coats it with another Blizzard. “So… no Riku, huh.”

“No king, either,” Goofy says.

“Well, at least we got some training in?” Kairi says. “And…” She looks around the arena, frowning. “Where did Hercules go?”

“Back inside?” Sora guesses.

“I didn’t even see him leave.”

“He must be pretty fast.” There’s a pause. “He’s also  _ crazy _ buff.”

“ _ Yeah. _ ”

“I’ve never seen anyone that built in my entire life.”

“I think his  _ muscles _ have muscles.”

“Okay, now I’m just picturing his biceps having other smaller biceps on top. Like a double scoop ice cream cone.”

Kairi laughs. “Stop, now that’s all I can think about!”

“Good, suffer with me!”

She pushes him over as he cackles, and they grapple half-heartedly on the dusty ground.

“Kairi? Sora?”

They freeze in place. Kairi has Sora’s wrist pinned with one hand and is pushing at his face with the other. Sora’s foot is pressed against her stomach and his free hand is grabbing at her arm.

Hercules thankfully doesn’t comment. “Phil wants to talk to you inside.”

They break apart sheepishly. “We’re coming,” Sora says.

Hercules nods and steps back inside. After he turns away, Sora mouths  _ double scoops _ at Kairi, and she punches him in the arm.

In the antechamber, Phil is standing on the pedestal he had previously asked them to move, for once one of the tallest people in the room - though Hercules is still a good head taller, standing to his right like a bodyguard. He has a rolled up scroll in one hand, and gestures for the four of them to line up in front of him. Once they’re in position, he clears his throat. “Alright. In light of recent events, I guess it wouldn’t be fair to keep treating you with baby gloves. So congrats, you’re moving up to the kid gloves.”

“Come on, read it from the scroll,” Hercules says. “You owe them that much.”

Phil sighs and unfurls the scroll. “I do hereby dub thee junior heroes, and confer upon thee full rights and privileges to participate in the games. Further -”

“What do you mean ‘junior heroes’?” Donald demands.

“Yeah, we just defeated Cerberus!” Sora adds. “It spat fireballs at us! And gross gooey darkness vomit!”

“And two of you are also just  _ kids _ ,” Phil retorts. “Seriously, what are you, twelve?”

“Fourteen,” Kairi says.

“Eh, not that big a difference. Regardless, being a true hero takes more than just slaying monsters.”

“So what else does it take?” Goofy asks.

“That’s just something you’ll have to find out for yourselves,” Hercules says. “Just like I did.”

“By competing in the games?” Sora asks.

“That’s one way. You just have to follow your hearts.”

“If you want to compete in the games, you’ll have to wait a while,” Phil says. “We gotta clean up the mess out there first.”

Sora nods. “We’ve got other stuff we need to do. We’ll just come back later. Thanks for everything!” He starts for the door, and Kairi falls into step behind him with Donald and Goofy.

“Hey,” Phil says. “Take care of yourselves.”

Kairi nods. “We will.”

They find Cloud sitting in front of the giant gates leading out of the Coliseum. He looks bruised and battered, but alive. He’s writing something in a small, stained notebook.

“Hey,” Kairi says when they get close. “Are you okay?”

Cloud shrugs. He finishes writing and starts tearing out pages. “I’ve felt worse.”

Ugh,  _ boys. _ “That’s not what I asked.”

He looks up sharply and then sighs, his expression softening. “I’m fine.”

“So what was all that about, anyway?” Sora asks.

“I’m... looking for someone. Hades said he would help me.”

“And you believed him?”

“I got desperate.” Cloud stands, tucking the notebook and pencil into a pocket. “I tried to exploit the power of darkness and it backfired.” He stares intently at a spot in the empty air, seeing something invisible to everyone except him. “I was surrounded by it, and I couldn’t find the light.”

“You’ll find it,” Kairi says.

“We’re searching too,” Sora adds.

“For your light?”

They share a glance and nod. “Yeah,” Sora says.

He steps forward and pulls a small object out of another pocket. “Don’t lose sight of it.” He hands the object and the torn pages to Sora as he walks past them toward the Coliseum doors. “And… thanks.”

“Hey, that’s another one of those rare gummi blocks!” Goofy says.

“You’re really giving us this?” Sora asks.

“I thought you might get more use out of it than me, and it sounds like I was right. Consider it a parting gift.”

Kairi scans the pages in Sora’s hand.  _ Sonic Blade _ is written in deliberate lettering at the top, and the simple diagrams look like the rushing move Cloud had been using in their fight. Speaking of the fight…

“Hey,” she calls after Cloud. “How about a rematch sometime? No interruptions from giant dog monsters!”

Cloud chuckles. “I’ll think about it.” He raises one hand in a lazy wave and disappears into the Coliseum.

“Two of those gummi blocks in a row?” Donald says. “They must be important.”

“We should see what Cid thinks,” Goofy says.

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to go back to Traverse Town anyway. We could use a breather,” Kairi points out.

“Yeah, I wanna show Leon my staff! Last one to the ship’s a rotten egg!” Sora is already running for the gates before he even finishes talking, and slams one open with his shoulder.

Kairi sighs and takes off after him. She’s not going to be a rotten egg anytime soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> having to stop to focus on school + this chapter being 1.5x as long as the others = writing it felt ENDLESS holy shit
> 
> It's here! I'm still here! I should be able to start finally showing some of the main plot soon; I haven't yet because it's still mostly just the same as it is in canon. Once things start changing you'll be seeing a lot more from other perspectives.
> 
> Feel free to (and/or please do) leave a comment if you enjoyed the chapter!
> 
> Next time: some familiar faces return.


	4. Found and Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Returning to Traverse Town to plan their next move, the party gains new allies and learns more about what (and who) they're up against. Sora rings a bell. Kairi struggles with her intuition. Riku is given shady advice.

“But seriously,” Sora says as they step into Traverse Town, “why is it called Thunder if it’s lightning magic? Thunder is the sound, the spell should be a huge boom.”

“Explain thunderbolts,” Kairi points out.

“I dunno, people used to think they were the same thing?”

“Maybe the spell was developed before people realized they were different.”

“Maybe, but there’s not even a boom! There’s no actual thunder sound, it just sounds zappy.”

“Do you  _ want _ to deafen yourself every time you cast it?”

“What I  _ want _ is a bit of realism!”

“You’re really bringing realism up when we can set things on fire with our minds now and we’re flying around in a neon blocky spaceship to  _ other worlds _ .”

“Look, it should at least sound like a loud crack. The little zaps make it sound less cool than it is.”

“What do they make sound less cool?” Yuffie asks.

Kairi jumps. They’re standing in front of Cid’s item shop now; Yuffie must have joined them without her noticing.

“One of the spells we learned,” Kairi says.

“Yeah, ‘Thunder.’” Sora physically makes air quotes with his fingers when he says the name. “It doesn’t sound anything like thunder!”

“Wow, what idiots named that spell? Oh! If you guys are learning magic, you should look for that old wizard that’s supposed to be living around here somewhere,” Yuffie says. “His name was… Marvin? Something with an M.”

“We can ask around while we’re here,” Kairi says.

“Hey, Yuffie! Check out our new gear!” Sora swings his staff off of his back and Yuffie’s eyes light up.

“Where did you get that!?”

“We entered a tournament at this coliseum and we both got backup weapons since we’re kinda just sharing the Keyblade, so now we have more options in fights!”

Kairi unsheathes one of her daggers, holding it out for Yuffie to see. Yuffie takes it and turns it over in her hands, bouncing from foot to foot from sheer excitement. “These are  _ really _ well made, how much did they cost? Ooh, we have to spar later, I want to see how you guys fight. Where was that coliseum, I want to enter a tournament too!”

“It was in another world, it’s called the Olympus Coliseum,” Kairi says.

“The guy running it is kind of a jerk though,” Sora adds. “It took forever to convince him to let us even try out! Also, he’s half goat.”

“Wait, he’s what?”

“Anyway, do you know where Leon is? We want to show him too.”

“Oh, he’s in his secret training cavern.”

“Leon has a secret training cavern?” Kairi asks.

“Well, it’s not really a secret. It’s just hard to get to, so most people don’t bother. The entrance is a drainage tunnel in that alley in the second district, where the bars blocking it are big enough to squeeze through.”

“We have to go through the sewers?”

“Leon says there’s another entrance, but he won’t tell anyone what it is. Not even me.” Yuffie pouts. “And they’re not really sewers, but the water isn’t super clean and it’s dark in there so people mostly avoid it. It gives him a private place to train and be all broody, I guess.”

Sora makes a face. “So he just makes people trudge through dirty water if they want to talk to him?”

“Yep!”

“Thanks, Yuffie,” Kairi says. “We’ll go find him.”

“Tell him it’s almost his turn to patrol the town for me,” Yuffie says. She gives them a little wave before turning around and climbing nimbly up the side of the item shop and disappearing over the roof.

It’s easy enough to find the tunnel in the alley, and the gaps between the iron bars are wide enough to slip through, as promised. The water reaches the middle of Kairi’s calves, and is unpleasantly cold. It’s not as gross as Yuffie had made it seem, but she can see why people don’t come in here unless it’s necessary.

The dark tunnel opens into a larger cavern lit by firelight, coming from a pair of braziers flanking a strange-looking archway. The water continues around the edge of the cavern, disappearing into an even smaller tunnel. By the edge of the water, Leon is practicing stances with Aerith perched on one of the larger boulders watching him.

Aerith spots them and waves. “Hi, guys!”

Leon stops almost mid-swing and looks over at them. “You’re back.” He rests his sword on his shoulder. “Did you run into problems?”

“No, but look!” Sora brandishes his staff. “We got new weapons!”

Leon holds out his hand and Sora tosses it to him. “Hm. Looks well made. Good to see you have options besides that Keyblade.” He hands the staff back. “So what have you been up to?”

Sora launches into a rambling account of their adventures in Wonderland and the Olympus Coliseum, with Kairi, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy chiming in to correct and add details. Leon listens intently, nodding thoughtfully in spots and frowning in others. Aerith gasps when Sora mentions Cloud.

“You saw him?” she asks.

“Yeah, you know him?”

“He’s from our world,” Leon explains. “We haven’t seen him since it fell.”

“It’s good to know he’s okay,” Aerith says. “Next time you see him, can you tell him where he can find us?”

“We will,” Sora promises.

“You said you found a Keyhole, and were able to lock it with the Keyblade,” Leon says.

“Do you know what that was about?” Kairi asks.

“Every world has a Keyhole exactly like it hidden somewhere. Each one leads to the heart of that world.”

“Worlds have hearts?” Sora asks.

“They do,” Leon says. “The Heartless can enter a world’s heart through the keyhole, and they do something to the world’s core.”

Kairi’s heart sinks. “What happens to the world?”

“It disappears,” Aerith says.

“Like our island. And every other world the Heartless have taken.” There had been a door in the Secret Place, hanging slightly ajar. If Sora hadn’t found her there when he did, she would have still been standing in front of it when the darkness poured out. She’s willing to bet the Keyhole had been there.

“That’s why that Keyblade is so important,” Leon says. “Locking a world’s Keyhole prevents the Heartless from passing through it to its heart. With every Keyhole you lock, you save another world from destruction.”

“Where’s this world’s Keyhole?” Sora asks.

“We don’t know,” Leon says. “I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in the town based on the number of Heartless skulking around, but it’s hard to find unless it reacts to the Keyblade.”

“We’ll find it and lock it, then,” Kairi decides.

Leon nods. “Your best bet after that is to keep traveling to other worlds. You two are the only ones who can seal the Keyholes.”

“And we need to find your friend and King Mickey,” Goofy says.

“Oh, right.” Sora holds out the gummi block they had found in Wonderland. “Goofy said this one is different from the other gummi blocks. Do you know what it’s for?”

Leon stares intently at the gummi. He doesn’t say anything, and Kairi starts to suspect that he doesn’t actually know what it is and doesn’t want to admit it.

“You can ask Cid,” Aerith says. “He should know.”

\---

Cid grunts, turning the gummi block over in his hand. “This here’s a navigation gummi,” he says.

“A navigation gummi?” Sora echoes. “What does it do?”

“Exactly what you’d expect.” He sets the gummi down on the counter. “Takes you to other worlds. I expect you’ll want it installed on your ship, so I’ll take care of that for you.”

“Can you install another seat too? There’s only three,” Kairi says.

Cid gives them a considering look and starts chuckling. “Shouldn’t be too hard. Before that though, I got this thing to deliver.”

“What is it?”

“An old book,” Cid says, bending down behind the counter. He straightens with the book in question in hand, setting it down for them to see it. “When I got it, it was practically fallin’ apart. I fixed it up the best I could, so now I just gotta take it back to the guy who brought it in.”

“We can deliver it for you,” Sora offers.

“I’d appreciate that. It’s the old house past the third district. Look for the big fire sign. While you do that I’ll work on your ship.” Cid scoops up the gummi piece, leaving the book on the counter. 

A loud thud from outside shakes the shop, followed by the tolling of a bell. The Keyblade appears in Sora’s hand as he whirls around. “What was that?”

“The bell at the gizmo shop,” Cid says. “Might be worth checkin’ out, but don’t forget to deliver that book. Once I’m done you can find me at the house in the third district, by the entrance to the second.”

“House in the third district, got it,” Kairi says. “Thanks, Mr. Cid!”

“It’s just Cid!”

She grabs the book and hurries after Sora, making sure it’s secure. She doesn’t want to risk losing it or damaging it again before it can be delivered.

“The gizmo shop was in the second district, right?” he asks.

“Yup,” Goofy says.

“I remember seeing a ladder up to the roof,” Kairi says. “There’s probably a back exit to get to it.”

Finding the gizmo shop is easy. Getting through it and finding the back door is harder, because the place is built like a maze and a pack of Heartless have decided to settle inside of it. Kairi spends a frustrating ten minutes chasing a small platoon of Soldiers through one of the machines, dodging pistons and turning gears, while Sora takes on a trio of Large Bodies. Every so often she can hear soft  _ boink _ s as the balloon-like Heartless collide with each other.

A well-timed Blizzard stops the last few Soldiers in their tracks, letting Kairi catch up and dispatch them. She finally tumbles out of the machinery next to Sora, annoyed and rubbing at grease streaks on her arms.

“You took a while there,” Sora comments.

“Next time, you get to chase the little ones through a death trap,” she grumbles. “ Ugh, I’m gonna have grease in my hair for a week.”

“I think that was all of them,” Goofy says.

“In this room or in the building?"

“If we wait around long enough, more will probably show up,” Sora points out.

“Then let’s keep moving,” Donald says.

The back rooms of the gizmo shop are connected in a large circle, something they only find out when they end up back in a room that had been trashed by the Heartless they just defeated. 

“This is hell,” Kairi says. “This is our own personal hell.”

“We must have just missed the exit,” Sora says. “Let’s check one more time.”

Halfway through the next circuit they finally find the back door, almost hidden behind a stack of boxes and scrap metal. Sora pushes it open and steps out, looking around. “Found the ladder!” he says over his shoulder as he moves out of sight.

Kairi follows him out and sees him climbing up the ladder attached to the side of the shop. She climbs up after him, hearing Donald and Goofy negotiating their own climb below her. When she reaches the top, she sees that the rest of the shop continues upward, with a small area to walk around on the lower roof. There’s a boarded up gap in the building, and she can see glints of yellowish metal behind the boards.

“Who rang the bell earlier if it’s boarded up like this?” she wonders.

“Heartless?”

“Why would a Heartless ring a bell? And they would have still had to get around the boards.”

“I don’t know, I pretty much just blame Heartless for everything at this point.”

“How do we get in there?”

Sora summons the Keyblade and taps it against the boards. Nothing happens.

“I don’t know what you even expected,” Kairi says. “There’s not even a lock. It’s literally just a bunch of boards.”

Sora wedges the Keyblade between two of the boards and starts using it as a lever to pry them apart. After a few seconds the lower one bursts apart, sending chunks of wood flying past Kairi.

He sticks his head through the gap. “There’s no sign any Heartless were here.”

“Maybe try ringing the bell?” Goofy suggests.

Kairi hears Sora grunt, straining to reach something beyond the boards. Seconds later the bell peals loudly. When her ears stop ringing, she hears the scraping of stone in the square below and turns to see the mural in the fountain rotating to reveal a new design.

_ What kind of complex puzzle…  _ “Ring it again,” she says. She has a strong feeling the mural is hiding something.

The bell rings out again, and a third face is revealed. It looks like there’s an entire painted cube set into the fountain. “One more time.”

The bell rings a third time. The mural rotates, and the jets in the fountain activate, shooting water into the air. As the jets disperse into a fine mist, the face of the mural shines and a large keyhole appears. It looks like a solid shadow was superimposed over the mural, rather than an actual hole in the stone.

“It’s the Keyhole!” Donald shouts. It’s a lot larger than the one in Wonderland, especially considering the fact that they were shrunken down at the time.

“What!?” Sora backs hastily out of the hole in the boards and turns around. “We found it!”

“We gotta get down there before the Heartless show up,” Goofy says.

They hurry down the ladder and drop off the ledge into the main square. As they cross, Kairi’s stomach does a very distinctive backflip. It’s the feeling she’s starting to realize indicates strong darkness is nearby, which means… “Incoming!” she yells.

Before she even finishes her warning, a familiar Heartless crashes into the ground between them and the fountain. The Guard Armor straightens from its landing to tower over them, its arm pieces spinning lazily.

“There’s more than one of these things!?” Sora exclaims.

Kairi takes the Keyblade, falling into a two-handed stance. Donald casts Thunder and the bolt of electricity strikes the Armor’s helmet, sending sparks crackling across the rest of its body.

The Armor… falls forward?

Its gauntlets slam into the ground, which shakes under their feet from the impact. The torso rotates forward, bringing the legs up with it as the head rises. The feet snap into a smaller angle, looking almost like giant mittens. The end result is a fully inverted Guard Armor, with its hands serving as its feet and its feet now serving as its hands. The Armor’s helmet settles into what used to be the waist, but is now the collar. With an echoing metallic  _ clang _ , the faceplate falls open, revealing two beady yellow eyes glowing in the shadows within. The Armor shudders, rising above the ground to hover in the air as its gauntlet legs swirl around under it.

“Same strategy?” Kairi asks.

“Same strategy,” Sora says. “We’ll come at it from both sides.”

He takes out his staff and darts to the side, moving around the Armor. Kairi circles around its other side with the Keyblade, and in tandem they leap up, striking down at its leg arms. She hits the arm again as she swings the Keyblade back up, and manages to get one more good hit as gravity takes over and she falls to the ground.

Before she can jump again, the gauntlet legs swoop toward her. She rolls out of the way before they can knock her off her feet and casts Fire. The spell forces one of the gauntlets backward toward Donald and Goofy, and she charges the other one with the Keyblade raised. It tries to spin away from her, clawlike spikes flashing, but she sidesteps and brings the Keyblade down. The gauntlet shatters in only a few hits, but it manages to rake across Kairi’s arm before it does, leaving shallow gashes that immediately well up with blood.

A shout from Sora has her diving to the side as one of the legs slams down where she had just been standing. She glances around; the other gauntlet is gone, probably destroyed by Donald and Goofy, and Sora is hanging from one of the legs while the other rises from the ground, already rotating to fly toward her again. The torso is hovering ominously above them, circling as if it’s waiting for the right moment to slam down.

She leaves the free leg for Donald and Goofy and maneuvers under the torso. She can’t actually see it, but the Heartless should have an actual body hidden under the armor. The Keyblade disappears from her hand suddenly as Sora summons it. She sighs and casts Blizzard up into the bottom of the torso instead, and is rewarded as the Heartless flinches away, turning to fly off across the square.

She chases after it, throwing spells at it until her reserves run low.  She notes with some satisfaction that its movements have become erratic, like it’s panicking. One more Fire should -

The torso points its lower opening at Kairi as brightly glowing energy begins to gather in the empty space. Kairi dives away as it fires the energy off like a cannon, and even though it missed her, the force of the energy slamming into the ground knocks her off her feet.

She rolls into a crouch and whirls around. The torso is charging up another blast, so she throws another Blizzard into the opening. The swirling energy sputters and dissipates as the torso shudders violently, retreating toward the steps leading up to the shops ringing the square.

Kairi summons the Keyblade and runs not at the Heartless, but at the steps next to it. She takes them two at a time and leaps, swinging the Keyblade down at the Armor’s floating head.

The Keyblade connects with the satisfying ring of metal hitting metal, and its momentum carries the head down into the torso, sending both pieces of armor down several feet. The same energy it had been firing off begins to crackle around it like a dramatically malfunctioning machine, and Kairi backs away, holding the Keyblade up warily.

The armor rattles violently, still sparking, until the head slams into the neck opening with a  _ clang _ , and both pieces start to crumble. Large pieces break off and dissolve into shadow as the glowing heart it held escapes into the sky.

The tip of the Keyblade shines brightly, and Kairi raises it to point it at the Keyhole. The same beam of light that locked the Keyhole in Wonderland connects with the Keyhole and the same click echoes through her head, less of a sound and more of a feeling. The outline of the Keyhole glows brightly before flaking away, and something falls into the fountain as it disappears.

Sora leans over the edge, sticking his arm into the water to fish the mystery item out. “It’s a gummi piece,” he says, holding it up.

“Looks like another navigation gummi,” Goofy says.

“Really?” Kairi whines. “We just left Mr. Cid.”

“Let’s just go deliver his book first, then,” Sora says. “We can find him again later.”

They find the fire door Cid mentioned deep in an alley in the third district. It’s a massive red slab with weird-looking runes carved into the archway around it, with a flame painted onto the center of the door in a lighter red. There’s no handle in sight, and when Sora taps on the door with the Keyblade it doesn’t react.

“Is this even a door?” Donald wonders. “Let’s just find a way around.”

“There’s got to be a way to open it if Cid told us to go this way,” Sora says. “We just need to figure out what that is.”

“Maybe fire is involved?” Kairi suggests.

“Hmmm.” Sora tilts his head, studying the door. After a few moments he raises his hand and casts Fire. When the spell hits the door, the painted flame starts to glow brightly, pulsing like a heartbeat. After a few seconds, the door slides upward. It locks into the wall above the door frame, sending tiny avalanches of dust into the dark opening left behind.

“Spooky,” Kairi comments.

“Don’t worry, if any monsters show up I’ll protect you,” Sora says.

She snorts. “More like I’ll protect you. You cried watching the live action Scooby-Doo movie and had to leave the room.”

“That was  _ one time, Kairi! _ ”

“What’s Scooby-Doo?” Goofy asks.

“It’s a cartoon about a group of teenage detectives and their talking dog,” Kairi says. “They solve crimes and expose monsters that usually end up being mean, rich old men in disguises.”

“And it’s scary?” Donald asks.

“No, Sora’s just a baby.”

“That  _ one scene _ was scary,” Sora huffs. “And I was  _ nine _ .”

“Like I said: a baby.”

The door leads down into a dimly lit water-filled cavern, with a small grassy island in the middle. A small set of steps on the island leads up to a strangely built, dilapidated house. There’s no bridge across the water except for a couple of tiny islands - more like just piles of dirt - barely breaking the surface.

Kairi jumps across the little islands, grimacing when the ground squishes beneath her feet. The larger island in the center is much more solid, and she can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief when her shoes don’t sink into thick, slippery mud.

“How do we get in?” Sora asks, placing a hand on the wall. In front of them, what looks like it’s supposed to be a window or wide doorway is boarded up and covered in a tattered red curtain. The gaps between the boards are too small to fit through, so Kairi follows the curve of the wall toward the other side of the house.

Nearly a third of the way around she finds another hole, covered by a thick green curtain. Pushing it aside reveals a person-shaped opening into the house. “Over here,” she says, and she steps inside.

The inside of the house is as dark as the outside, and completely bare. The only feature of the room is a round stone platform in the center, with steps carved into the side wrapping around it. It reminds her of their Secret Place on the island - despite the lack of any kind of adornment, something about it makes it feel like a sanctuary.

“Whoa,” Sora says behind her. “Are we sure this is the right place?”

“Did you see any other ‘fire doors’ in the third district?” Donald says.

“No, but…” Sora hops up onto the platform and gestures around the room. “It looks like no one  _ ever _ lived here. It doesn’t even feel vaguely haunted the way abandoned buildings are supposed to.”

“Well, I should hope not,” says an unfamiliar voice. Sora whirls around with a yell. “I’d hate to have to deal with a ghost living on the premises on top of those Heartless running amok.”

The owner of a voice is an old man covered head to toe in a solid blue robe and pointy blue hat, with a full white beard almost as long as the robe itself. He’s carrying a large orange bag in one hand and a long wand in the other. Kairi peers past the old man, confused; the only entrance to the house is behind Donald and Goofy, on the opposite side, but none of them saw him arrive.

“I must say, you’ve arrived sooner than I expected,” the old man continues.

“You… knew we were coming?” Sora asks.

“Of course.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Merlin. As you can see, I am a sorcerer.”

“This is your house?” Kairi asks.

“I don’t see anyone else living here!” Merlin says. “I’ve been traveling for quite some time, but I was called home on urgent business.” He nods toward Donald and Goofy. “Your king has requested my help, Donald and Goofy.”

“King Mickey?” Goofy asks. “You talked to him?”

“Indeed,” Merlin says. He turns toward Sora and Kairi. “And who might you two be?”

“I’m Kairi,” she says. “And this is Sora.”

“Ah, you have found the key. And two of you, no less. This is quite the stroke of luck.” His eyes are clear and discerning, and Kairi feels like she’s being studied like a bug in a jar.

“What did the king ask you to do?” Donald asks.

“One moment,” Merlin says. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll unpack before we get down to business. Ah, Sora, you might want to step down from there.”

“Um… okay.” Sora hops down from the platform, standing next to Kairi.

Merlin sets down the orange bag and opens it, then steps back and raises his arms. “Presto!”

There’s a twinkle in the depths of the bag. Kairi leans forward to get a closer look, only to jump back as a miniature table shoots out. The table is followed by plates, cups, cutlery, bookshelves, a tea kettle… Kairi ducks as a rapidly growing bed whizzes past her head, and a tall lamp lights itself before settling on top of the platform. For a few minutes the room is full of swirling furniture and household items. A swarm of books flaps aggressively at Sora and Kairi, pushing them out of the way, before settling into a haphazard pile on the floor. Other collections of books form messy piles in the corners of the room, between a desk, a telescope, and a large blackboard with incomprehensible symbols and equations scribbled across it. When the maelstrom clears, the area looks much more like the cluttered home of an eccentric old sorcerer. Most of the space on the platform has been taken up by a small round table, flanked by the lamp and a single high-backed chair.

“Wow,” Kairi murmurs.

Merlin nods decisively, looking around at the now fully furnished house. “Now then. The king asked me to train the young Keyblade wielder - er, wielders - in the art of magic.”

Sora’s face lights up. “Really?”

“How did you know that was us?” Kairi asks. “We don’t even have it out.”

“Ah, never underestimate the senses of an old sorcerer,” Merlin says cryptically. “You have an air about you that one learns to recognize after years of experience.”

“You can tell just by looking at us?” Sora asks.

“More or less. But more importantly, you’re traveling with the pair who the king tasked with accompanying the wielder of the Keyblade. They would have no reason to associate with any random children.”

Sora deflates slightly.

“Oh!” Kairi exclaims, remembering the book. “We needed to deliver this to you.” She holds it out to Merlin.

“Ah, Cid finished the repairs, did he? Thank you.” Merlin takes the book and meanders across the room, placing it on a short lectern in the corner.

“What kind of book is it?”

“I have no idea.”

“Isn’t it your book?” Sora asks.

“Truthfully, I merely found it one day. I thought it was curious, so I sent it to Cid to have him fix it. As far as I know, it’s a perfectly ordinary book. Perhaps its only purpose was to bring you to me.”

“But… Cid was the one who was supposed to bring it back to you.”

“And yet here you are.” Merlin smiles. “Now, what skill do you have in magic?”

Over the next hour, Merlin tests their abilities and teaches them the basics of healing magic and a defensive spell that calls up a swirling barrier of wind. He then tests the barriers by enchanting several books to fling themselves across the room. The books are completely caught in Kairi’s spell and tossed away, but the last one gets through Sora’s defenses, hitting him in the chest.

Regardless, Merlin seems satisfied with their progress, and he nods decisively. “That will do for now,” he says. “We wouldn’t want to strain your abilities while they are still developing.”

“I can keep going,” Sora insists, even though he’s swaying on his feet. The last gusts of his wind spell sputter weakly around him.

Kairi grabs one of the flying books out of the air and taps him on the head with it, easily breaking through the wind and dispelling it for good. “Nope, I think you’re done,” she says.

“Okay, yeah, I’m done.”

“Thank you, Merlin,” she says, setting the book down on the table. It floats up again, shakes its pages at her aggressively, and soars over to one of the piles. “We can come back next time we’re in town?”

“Yes, that sounds just fine,” Merlin says distantly. He’s already stopped paying attention to them, rummaging through a different book pile. Sora shrugs when she glances quizzically over at him, and they quietly leave the hut.

The fire-activated door slides shut behind them as they re-enter the third district. They’ve only taken a few steps into the square when a pair of Soldiers appears in front of them. They fall into defensive stances, but before anyone strikes someone falls onto the Soldiers from above, destroying them with a single swipe of a dark blade.

Riku straightens as the forms of the Heartless disperse, swinging the curved blade back casually. It disappears from his hand, just like the Keyblade does for her and Sora. “There you are,” he says with a grin.

“Riku!?”

Sora rushes forward, first reaching for Riku’s shoulders before aiming further up and tugging on his face. Riku swats him away, laughing, and his arms land back on his shoulders instead. “Hey, quit it.”

“You’re  _ really _ here?” Sora asks, still reluctant to let go.

“I hope so. It took forever to find you guys.”

Kairi isn’t really sure why she hangs back. It’s  _ Riku _ , she’s been worried sick about him non-stop, and yet… With Sora, on the beach, she had wanted to leave Riku behind. There was something new about him, something that scared her, but no matter how strongly she felt it, or how hard she looked, she couldn’t make herself actually see it.

The uncertainty makes her stomach flutter, so she pushes the feeling aside and just waves at Riku from where she’s standing. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she says.

He smiles at her over Sora’s shoulder. “Right back at you.”

“You wouldn’t  _ believe _ all the crazy adventures we’ve had!” Sora says. He shakes Riku’s shoulders for emphasis.

Riku laughs and slips out of Sora’s grip. “Really? Figures you two would find a way to get into trouble without me around.”

“Most of it wasn’t our fault! There was this crazy queen who bullied her whole court around for no reason and she tried to execute us and some other girl! And then we helped her escape and…”

Kairi tunes out Sora’s excited storytelling as the now-familiar nausea of approaching Heartless rises in her gut. She walks forward, following the feeling as a Shadow rises from the ground behind Sora and Riku. They’re too preoccupied with catching up to notice, not even when she brushes right past them.

“Just leave everything to me,” Riku is saying. “I can protect-”

Kairi summons the Keyblade and cuts down the Heartless in one smooth motion.  _ They’ll need to try a lot harder than that to get the jump on us, _ she thinks smugly. She feels Riku’s eyes on her and turns around, resting the Keyblade on her shoulder. “Leave it to who?” she asks lightly.

“How did you-”

“Why do you think we went on all those crazy adventures, Riku?” she asks him. “We were looking for you.”

“With Donald and Goofy’s help,” Sora adds, indicating them with a wave of his arm.

Riku looks over at them as if noticing them for the first time. Donald keeps his arms crossed suspiciously, but Goofy waves.

“And guess what?” Goofy says. “Sora and Kairi are the Keyblade masters.”

The Keyblade is tugged out of Kairi’s hand so smoothly she almost doesn’t notice. “So this is called a Keyblade?” Riku asks, holding it up. He tilts his hand, studying it, and something Kairi can’t name glints in his eyes.

“Hey, give it back,” Sora says. He reaches for it, and Riku dodges him easily, holding the Keyblade up out of his reach.

“Catch,” he says eventually, and tosses Sora the Keyblade.

Sora frowns at it briefly - did he notice something Kairi missed? - before shaking his head and moving on. “So, you’re coming with us, right?” he asks. “We’ve got this awesome ship, wait till you see -”

“Absolutely not,” Donald says. “He can’t come.”

“Why not?”

“Because I said so!”

“He’s our friend!” Kairi protests. “He could help us look for -”

“He’s gone,” Goofy says.

“What?” Kairi whirls around. They’re the only ones in the square, with no sign Riku had ever been there.

“Nice going,” Sora mutters. He sighs and crosses his hands behind his head. “At least he’s okay, right?”

Kairi’s not sure he is, but she doesn’t have any proof except for a gut feeling. Instead she just smiles and hopes it looks genuine. “Yeah. We found him once, we’ll track him down again.”

“I’m pretty sure he found us.”

“Then next time it’s our turn!”

“We should tell Cid about the Keyhole,” Goofy says. “And the new navigation gummi.”

“He said that house was by the entrance, right?” Sora says. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

The house is, in fact, easy to find; there’s only one building near the entrance to the district that isn’t occupied by a shop. The door is already unlocked when Kairi tests it, and it swings open into a well-lit room stacked with boxes. “Mr. Cid?” Kairi calls.

There’s a thump from the boxes, and some muffled swearing. Cid’s head appears from behind the stack. “Back, are ya?” he asks. “Delivered that book?”

“Mission accomplished,” she says brightly.

“Is that Kairi and Sora?” Leon emerges from an adjacent room, with Aerith at his heels. “What do they need this time?”

“Why do we have to need something?”

“Because so far you have needed something every time we see you?” Aerith says. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation.”

“We found the Keyhole!” Sora announces, and the atmosphere in the room immediately lightens.

“That’s good to hear,” Leon says. “I was worried it wouldn’t be in town. You locked it?”

“Yup.”

“We found another navigation gummi, too,” Kairi says. She hands it over to Cid, who holds it up to the light, frowning.

“This one’s part of a set,” he grumbles. “Can’t install it ‘till you find the second one. Mind if I hold onto it?”

“It’s probably safer with you than it is with us.”

He nods and tucks it into his belt. “Installed the other two like you wanted, and put in that extra seat. No more lap rides.”

Kairi grins, relieved. “Thank you so much.”

“Now onto, ah, more serious business.” Cid rubs his chin, glancing at Aerith and Leon. Neither of them respond to whatever he seems to be trying to ask them, and he sighs. “You ever hear of Maleficent?”

Kairi shakes her head. 

“Nope,” Sora says.

“I hear she’s in town,” Cid says darkly.

Kairi’s stomach drops. “And that’s bad.”

“She’s the reason the town is full of Heartless,” Leon says. “She’s a sorceress who can control them. Don’t take her lightly.”

“We lost our world because of her,” Cid continues. “One day everything was fine, and the next… Heartless swarmin’ around like a buncha roaches.”

“That was nine years ago,” Aerith says quietly.

“That’s terrible,” Kairi says.

“I grabbed what I could and whoever I could find and never looked back,” Cid says. “For better or worse.”

“Our ruler was a wise man named Ansem who dedicated his life to studying the Heartless,” Leon says. “His research should tell us if there are any other ways of getting rid of them, or stopping them for good.”

“That’s great!” Sora says. “Where is it?”

“We don’t know.”

Sora’s shoulders slump.

“Near as we can figure, it got scattered when our world was destroyed,” Cid says. “Odds are Maleficent’s got most of the pages, but she might not.”

“It’s something,” Kairi agrees. “We can look for them.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Cid says. “Not expectin’ you to go out of your way for them, but if you come across one it’s an advantage we shouldn’t ignore.”

“Maleficent is powerful and clever, and she’ll have only gotten more powerful over the years,” Leon says. “You’ll need all the help you can get.”

\---

“I did tell you,” Maleficent says. There’s an edge of smugness to her voice that Riku doesn’t like. “They don’t care about you anymore.” She grips Riku’s shoulder, too tightly. He can feel her fingernails digging through his clothes and into his skin. “If they did, why would they replace you with new friends?”

_ Better than you just pretending to care _ , he thinks. But then, they had acted happy to see him too. Even wanted him to come with them. “They didn’t even mention our home.”

“No, they didn’t,” she coos, far too sugar-sweet for it to be genuine - especially with her talons on his shoulder. “It seems they’re perfectly content leaving it and you behind.”

He tunes her out and focuses on his friends through the window. It’s always been the three of them, ever since Kairi arrived on the Islands, and even before then it was always him and Sora. They wouldn’t leave him behind.

Would they?

Her other hand comes down on his other shoulder. The added pressure is like he’s wearing a backpack full of rocks, like she’s trying to push him down into… something. “You’re better off without those wretched children,” she murmurs, almost directly in his ear.

He bites back an angry retort. Who is she to insult them like that? She doesn’t know anything about them, or him.

But he’s already seen her do a lot worse for smaller offenses.

“Think no more of them,” Maleficent says. “Come with me.” Her hands on his shoulders somehow get heavier. “I’ll help you find what you’re searching for.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy new year!!! my plan was to get this chapter done before and after my finals, but then i got home for break and just played spider-man so. this delay's on me.
> 
> i feel like i'm getting a little more comfortable mixing in my own stuff with the game's story? i have some fun stuff in mind for later chapters & i hope you guys like it!
> 
> next time: the team meets a princess.


	5. Infiltration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a hot desert land, another girl and another Keyhole are in danger. Sora keeps cool. Kairi shares the weight on her shoulders. Jasmine breaks into her own home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh hey it's been a whole month again

Goofy shifts uncomfortably in his seat on the gummi ship. He doesn’t have the same arcane know-how as Donald (and doesn’t need to, what with Donald right there with him) but he does know how to read a room, and the room is decidedly gloomy. He knows from experience how morale levels can affect a team, which means he needs to do something.

“So, uh, why don’t you tell us about your friend?” he prompts. The two in the back perk up almost immediately.

Donald shoots him a Look, and he shoots one right back. Even if there are two Keyblade masters on the ship, it won’t mean much if they’re too sad to wield it.

“He’s objectively the coolest person we know,” Kairi says.

“And the smartest,” Sora chimes in. “Well, not counting our parents and stuff.”

“He figured out how to build a raft that wouldn’t fall over if a wave hit it, and then showed us how so we could help him.”

“And he made sure the food we were planning on bringing when we left wouldn’t spoil.”

“Sometimes it’s like he knows _everything_ -”

“He can’t know everything, that’s impossible.”

“Well, pretty close!”

“He keeps beating me when we spar, but if Kairi and I gang up on him we could probably take him out.”

“You beat him that one time.”

“Yeah, but I fought dirty.”

“A win’s a win, Sora. Besides, ganging up on him is fighting dirty, too.”

“I guess so.”

Goofy relaxes, satisfied. Even if Donald is stewing in the pilot’s chair, Sora and Kairi seem happier, despite the light bickering. Having three fourths of the ship happy is better than only half, anyway.

And Donald will warm up to them. He always does.

\---

Kairi steps off the gummi ship and onto the solid ground of a new world - which is apparently an _oven_. She reels back, trying to remember how to breathe after being smacked in the face by what feels like a solid wall of heat. The heat follows her into the ship, and she hears Sora inhale sharply behind her.

“Is this world on _fire_ or something?” he complains. “It’s so hot out there!”

“Not on fire,” Jiminy explains from Sora’ shoulder. “Agrabah sits in the middle of a vast desert, so its climate is extremely hot and dry. You should make sure you stay hydrated if you’re going to be wandering around.”

Sora grimaces. “Got it.”

They step out of the ship together and their shoes crunch on fine sand. The nearby walls of a large city with pointed domes stretching into the sky rise from the desert, shimmering and wobbling in the heat.

Kairi had thought she was used to heat, but this is something else. Every breath feels like it sucks more moisture out of her, and her sweat evaporates almost before she even notices it. Jiminy hadn’t been kidding.

“You couldn’t have landed the ship a little closer to the city?” she asks, trying to keep the whine out of her voice.

“Some of us are actually trying to maintain a low profile,” Donald says pointedly.

“There’s keeping a low profile and then there’s dying of thirst because of overly cautious parking,” Sora retorts.

“Let’s just go,” Kairi says. If she gives Sora and Donald the chance to start really arguing, they’ll be going at it the entire way to the city. “We can find some water when we get there.”

It’s slow going thanks to the sand, which keeps flinging up onto Kari’s calves and into her shoes. The grains feel like tiny sparks before settling into familiar grainy annoyances. It’s almost like being home again.

The shade of the grand archway leading into Agrabah feels like a blessing. Sora casts Blizzard on the ground and flops down onto it, immediately sighing with relief. Kairi joins him and wants to cry. After the desert trek, the frozen ground is heavenly.

Eventually, their bliss is interrupted by Donald clearing his throat impatiently. Kairi sighs and gets to her feet, holding her hand out for Sora to pull himself up.

They wander aimlessly through Agrabah, not really sure what they’re supposed to be looking for. There’s something weird about the city - besides the presence of Heartless Kairi has been sensing since before they entered.

“Where is everyone?” Sora wonders, and _that’s_ it. The streets are deserted, which is especially unusual for the only place with actual food and people for miles around.

“Hiding from the Heartless?” she suggests.

“We haven’t even seen any,” Goofy points out.

“But they’re here somewhere.”

“How do you always know when they’re around, anyway?” Sora asks.

She frowns. “I… don’t know. I just kept getting a bad feeling and then Heartless always show up right after, so they’re probably connected.”

“What does it feel like?”

“Almost like nausea,” she says. “And like there’s a storm coming. The air feels heavy and twisted.”

“Huh. Weird.”

There’s a crash as a troupe of short figures wearing turbans and wielding curved swords smashes through a barricade of crates and furniture. The lead figures turn to look directly at them, and Kairi sees the beady yellow eyes of Heartless.

The Keyblade appears in Sora’s hands. “Let’s go!”

Kairi casts Aero on herself and grimaces as the hot dry wind swirls up into her face. Still, it’s extra protection against those swords.

She spends most of the skirmish trying to disarm them and fending off the Shadows that try to sneak up on her. Every so often she’ll get in a lucky hit and send a sword flying, and Sora lunges into the opening to dispatch the vulnerable Heartless. They make a good team.

“This is fascinating,” Jiminy says, watching the last one disappear. “The Heartless we encounter seem to be unique to each world, or variations tailored to different ones.”

“Except for the Shadows,” Kairi notes.

“Right. But what causes them to change? Some kind of camouflage?” Jiminy starts writing in his journal, mumbling quietly to himself on Kairi’s shoulder.

“What if they’re from this world?” Sora says. “Maybe they match everything else because they’re made from something here.”

“Could be,” Jiminy says absently. “That would have alarming implications for the security of every world, not just this one.”

Kairi stops in the shade of an awning, scanning the narrow street they’ve found themselves in. There seems to be a second floor to a couple of the shops, but peering inside, she can’t see any stairs. “Maybe there’s someone up there,” she says, pointing.

Goofy squints up at it. “Looks pretty empty to me.”

“If there’s Heartless around, they could be hiding out of sight,” Sora says. “Let’s try to find a way in.

It takes several minutes of searching before Donald notices a rickety ladder, leaned against the wall in an alleyway. One by one they climb it and find themselves in a mostly bare, dingy room full of dust and sand. Lumpy pillows line a bench under the window and there are crates stacked all along the walls. The room has a decent view of the palace, but it looks more like an abandoned storage room than a living space. It doesn’t even have a real door; a tattered curtain hangs over an opening in the wall, barely even qualifying as a barrier against the elements.

“Do you think anyone still lives here?” Sora wonders.

“I doubt it, it’s all sandy in here,” Donald says.

“It’s sandy everywhere,” Kairi points out. “Those pillows look mostly new.”

The sound of fabric snapping taut draws her attention. A crate in the corner is resting on the corner of a carpet - and the carpet is _moving_ , trying to get unstuck.

“Carpets are alive here?” Sora asks.

“I guess so.” The crate is heavy, even as Kairi simply tilts it to one side. The carpet flies free, circling around her head excitedly. It swoops around Sora, Donald and Goofy once each before flying out through the opening in the wall. Kairi watches it fly over the city walls and disappear.

“Do you think we were supposed to follow it?” Goofy asks.

“We should focus inside the city,” Donald says.

They return to the streets, keeping an eye out for Heartless patrols. It seems like they’re looking for something; they spread out and ransack empty market stalls before continuing on down the street.

Kairi ducks into an alley freshly vacated by the Heartless and finds herself in a dead end.

“Well, this was a bust,” Sora says. “We can’t figure out what’s going on here if there’s no one to even talk to.”

“Who’s there?” asks a soft voice.

Kairi and Sora whirl around, brandishing their Keyblade and staff respectively. “Who’s asking?” Sora calls out.

A girl who looks a couple of years older than Kairi, with sun-browned skin and long dark hair tied loosely back, steps out from behind the stacked crates in the corner of the alley. “I’m sorry if I startled you. I’ve been trying to stay out of sight.” She’s dressed in flowing light blue fabric, with gold jewelry and a headband with a blue gemstone set into it. “My name is Jasmine. My father is the sultan of Agrabah.”

“So you’re a princess,” Sora says.

She nods. “But he’s been deposed by Jafar, and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Who’s Jafar?” Goofy asks.

“He’s the royal vizier. He’s gained evil powers and seized Agrabah. He’s searching for something he called a Keyhole.”

“The Keyhole!?” Donald repeats incredulously.

“You know something about it?” Jasmine asks.

“We’re supposed to - _ow_ , Donald!” Sora complains. He rubs his foot where Donald stepped on it.

“It’s important,” Kairi explains. “And Jafar finding it would be very bad.”

Jasmine inclines her head gracefully. “I understand. I wish I could be of more help, but I barely escaped from Jafar even with help. I wish he was still here, but he said he had to go take care of something…”

“Who did?”

“Aladdin. I hope he’s alright.”

“Aladdin? Where might I find this street rat?”

The sneering, menacing voice comes from above them, accompanied by a surge of darkness. Kairi and the others turn toward it, and she sees a tall, thin man wearing a turban and fancy robes in red and black.

“Jasmine,” the man says, and Kairi shivers at the way his words almost seem to drip down toward them, full of venom. “Allow me to find you more suitable company, my dear. These little rats won’t do.”

“Funny you mention rats,” Kairi says. “It looks like you’ve got a drowned one on your face.” Sora high-fives her, stifling a cackle.

The man’s expression darkens. Heartless appear from the area around him, oozing up out of the ground and coalescing in midair. “You must be the children with the key. A pity you won’t survive to get much more use out of it.” As if responding to an unspoken cue, the Heartless surge forward and Jafar saunters away.

“Kairi, get Jasmine out of here!” Sora says. “We got this.”

Kairi hesitates, and lashes out at a Shadow when it gets close. “Are you sure?”

“Just _go_!”

She tosses him the Keyblade, grabs Jasmine’s hand, and runs. One of the sword-wielding Bandits tries to slash at her and she swerves out of the way. Jasmine kicks it aside as they pass.

The Heartless that decide to chase them are too slow to keep up and eventually Jasmine takes the lead, more familiar with the twisting streets of Agrabah than Kairi is. She leads her into the same broken-down home where the flying carpet had been trapped. “Aladdin brought me here the first time he helped me,” she says. “We should be safe here for a while.”

Kairi nods, sinking down onto one of the pillows.

“That was very brave of you,” Jasmine says quietly. “Insulting him like that.”

“I regretted it as soon as I said it,” Kairi admits. “I guess my reckless friends have rubbed off on me.” Trash talk was par for the course when they all got into sparring. Riku was usually the best at it; he was uncannily good at knowing how to make her and Sora really mad.

“Will they be okay?”

“Yeah. Sora’s tough, and Donald and Goofy have experience.” Kairi stares hard at the patterns on the pillow. Details from the confrontation in the alley are lining up in a way she doesn’t like. “Jafar had control over the Heartless.”

“Those things that tried to follow us?” Jasmine asks. Kairi nods. “He used them to take over. The rest of the city has been terrified to leave their homes because of them.”

“Good. They take people’s hearts.”

Jasmine pales.

“Sorry,” Kairi says. “Did anyone help Jafar take over?”

“A little before you found me, I overheard him talking to someone,” Jasmine says, frowning. “A woman who asked him about the Keyhole.”

“Maleficent.” It can’t be anyone else.

“Have you run into her before?”

“No, but I know a little about her. She can control the Heartless.” She must have shown Jafar how to command the Heartless, and they’re working together. “Did they say anything else?”

“She said they need seven ‘princesses of heart’ to open some final door,” Jasmine says. “With the way they were talking, I think… One of them might be me.”

“Then we’ll do our best to keep them away from you.”

“She warned Jafar about steeping himself in the darkness for too long. It seemed like she was in charge.”

“She must have given him the power to take over Agrabah in exchange for you and the Keyhole,” Kairi guesses. “We can’t let them find it.”

“What does this Keyhole do?”

Kairi hesitates. She’s probably not supposed to spill Keyblade secrets, but she just pretty much interrogated Jasmine. Giving some of her own information in exchange is more than fair. “The Keyhole leads to this world’s heart. If the Heartless find it and go through it, then this world will be consumed by darkness, and everyone with it.”

“ _This_ world?”

“There are countless worlds like this one in the universe,” Kairi says. Jasmine’s eyes widen. “I’ve been to a few of them, and the Heartless have destroyed lots more. Including mine.”

Jasmine covers her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

Kairi swallows around the lump in her throat. “It’s…” Okay? It’s _not_ okay. “I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”

She holds out her hand and summons the Keyblade. “This is the only weapon that can destroy the Heartless for good, and seal the Keyholes so nothing can enter them. Sora and I have to find the Keyholes before Maleficent and the Heartless do, or every world will be lost.”

Jasmine lowers her hand slowly. She steps forward and hugs Kairi tightly. She lets out a shaky breath and feels tears slide down her cheeks. The Keyblade disappears from her hand, and she realizes she’s shaking. “How can I help?” Jasmine whispers.

“I… I don’t know,” she says. “The Keyhole is somewhere on this world, hopefully nearby, but I have no idea where to start looking.”

Jasmine pulls back, still holding lightly onto Kairi’s arms. The soft pressure is reassuring, almost grounding. “Jafar has a head start on us. He might be keeping track of where he’s already looked…”

“Pardon the interruption,” Jiminy says from Kairi’s shoulder. Jasmine jumps back, startled. “And apologies for frightening you, your highness. If Jafar is working with Maleficent, she may have given him some of Ansem’s research, if she has any.”

“And he could be keeping it in the same places as any records of his search,” Kairi says. “Thanks, Jiminy. Jasmine, do you know where Jafar would set up?”

“The palace,” Jasmine says firmly. “No doubt he even had the audacity to take over my father’s chambers.”

Kairi stands up and dusts off her shorts. “Can you help me sneak in?”

\---

Sora leans against the wall, groaning. “Where did Kairi even _go_?” he complains.

“She’s probably hiding from the Heartless,” Donald says.

“Yeah, but that’s not so great when _we_ can’t find her.”

“Is that the carpet?” Goofy asks. He’s looking upward, shading his face with his hand.

Sora turns in that direction and notices the carpet from earlier, flying along the top of the wall. Its front edge is twisting from side to side, almost like it’s looking for something. Eventually the carpet swerves sharply and flies directly toward them, circling around the three of them like an excited puppy. “Well, it definitely recognizes us.”

The carpet stops in front of them, laid out flat. One of its corner tassels curls up, making a beckoning motion.

“You want us to get on?” Sora guesses.

Its front edge rises before curling and uncurling rapidly in a carpety approximation of an urgent nod.

Sora, Donald and Goofy climb onto the carpet, and it takes off as soon as it feels that they’re secure. The sun hangs low in the sky as the carpet soars across the cooling desert, and the wind actually feels nice instead of uncomfortably hot. Sora leans forward, peering over the carpet’s front edge and watching the sand pass by below. Riku would _never_ believe him if he told him about this.

The evening chill has begun to set in by the time Sora hears a distant screeching. The carpet seems to respond to the sound, picking up speed and losing altitude until it’s speeding just above the rolling dunes of the desert. The screeching gets louder by the second until the carpet crests a dune to see a man in tattered clothing and a monkey - the source of the screeching - struggling in a pit of loose sand.

The carpet swoops down and as Sora jumps off a gang of Bandit Heartless materialize, waving their swords aggressively. What were they called -

“Scimitars!” he blurts out.

“What!?” Donald quacks.

“Those curved swords are called scimitars!” Sora dodge rolls to the side as a Bandit slashes at him, hopping to his feet with the Keyblade in his hand.

“Is that important!?”

He knocks the blade out of a Bandit’s hand with sheer brute force, whirling into a four-hit combo and sending the Bandit flying. “Not really, I guess!”

The Bandits aren’t really dangerous as long as he remembers to stay aware of their scimitars. Unfortunately, he’s not so good at that. He backs up to give himself space to cast Cure, and has to dive to the side at the sound of something large whistling through the air. A large fist hits the ground and sends out a fiery shockwave that just barely misses him.

The owner of the fist, a giant Heartless with the build of a Large Body and clothes that match the Bandits, focuses on Sora and belches out a long stream of fire. He rolls under the flame and freezes the Heartless solid, dispatching it with a few solid hits before it thaws out.

When no more Heartless appear to continue the fight, Sora runs to the pit. He drops down to his stomach and holds out his staff for the man to grab and begin pulling himself out. Now that he’s closer, the man looks a lot more like a _boy_ , maybe a couple of years older than Sora.

It says something about how many fights he’s been in recently that when he hears the warning shout from Goofy, he throws himself to the side without even thinking about it. A scimitar sinks into the sand where he had just been and he groans. “Did you assholes wait until I wasn’t paying attention or something!?”

The man in the pit lets go of Sora’s staff, grabbing something metallic from his belt and rubbing at it frantically. “Genie! Get rid of these guys!”

A fountain of blue smoke explodes from the metal object, accompanied by a triumphant yell. An exuberant voice shouts, “Wish number one, coming right up!” and every Heartless around the pit disappears in a puff of the same blue smoke.

There’s another tug on Sora’s staff and he instinctively tightens his grip. The man starts pulling himself out of the pit, and Sora shimmies backwards to give him more room. Eventually both of them are able to sit up on the edge of the pit, panting.

“Thanks,” the man says. “I didn’t think anyone would be close enough to help - how did you get out here?”

“That carpet over there.” Sora points, and the carpet waves one of its tassels. “We helped it earlier, and then it showed up to take us out here.”

“Huh. Well, I guess I owe you one.” He holds out a hand, and Sora reaches out to shake it. “I’m Aladdin.”

“Sora. This is Donald and Goofy.” The name sounds _really_ familiar for some reason. “What were you doing all the way out here, anyway?”

“Finding this lamp,” Aladdin says, showing Sora the metal object from earlier. It’s an old-fashioned, slightly dirty lamp with a looping handle. “I got this, and that magic carpet, in the Cave of Wonders. According to legends, whoever holds the lamp can summon-”

“ _Please_ , kid, leave the intros to a professional!” The blue figure that had exploded out of the lamp shakes his head. He’s quite literally larger than life, easily twice as tall as Aladdin is - not to mention bright blue. Rather than legs, a wide red sash gives way to a wispy tail. He also has a thin beard that almost looks like Jafar’s, but less like a rat had drowned on his face. “Rub that lamp and have your dearest wishes granted by the one, the only, genie of the lamp!” He leans in close to Sora. “That’s yours truly, by the way. And today’s winner is… Aladdin!” A burst of confetti appears over Aladdin’s head as the genie swoops in to vigorously shake his hand. “Congratulations, pal!”

“Any wish?” Donald asks.

“Any three wishes,” the genie explains. “With some restrictions, I’m not all-powerful - though I do come pretty close if I do say so myself. So, Al - mind if I call you Al? - what’ll it be for wish number two?”

Aladdin looks about as perplexed as Sora feels. The genie talks a mile a minute and moves almost as fast, overacting nearly every word he says and darting from person to person. After a moment, he says “Can you make me a fabulously wealthy prince?”

The genie practically swoons. “Whoo! Money! Royalty! Fame! Why didn’t I think of that?” he laments to Sora, Donald and Goofy. “Okay, you asked for it! A hundred servants and a hundred camels loaded with gold! Just say the word and I’ll deliver it in thirty minutes or less, or your meal’s free. Hey, I’ll even throw in a cappuccino.”

 _What meal?_ Sora wonders.

“Uh, no thanks,” Aladdin says, looking a little bit panicked. “I think I’ll put that on hold until we reach Agrabah, actually.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” the genie says reluctantly.

“Why a prince, if you don’t mind me asking?” Goofy asks.

“There’s this girl in Agrabah named Jasmine,” Aladdin says. “But she’s a princess, and I’m… I’m just a nobody. She’d never fall for someone like me.”

 _That’s_ why his name had sounded familiar! “You’re _Aladdin_!” Sora blurts out.

Aladdin blinks. “Yeah?”

“We ran into Jasmine earlier! My friend Kairi is with her, but this jerk named Jafar is trying to capture her for some reason with Heartless - those guys that were trying to attack you.”

“Is she okay?”

“Probably? We were trying to regroup with her and Kairi when the carpet showed up.”

“We need to get back to Agrabah,” Aladdin says.

The carpet jumps to attention as Aladdin runs toward it, jumping on almost before it gets horizontal. Sora jumps on after him, with Donald and Goofy close behind, and the carpet ascends into the sky, leaving the pit and the desert sand behind.

The genie flies beside them, easily keeping up with the carpet, and stretches dramatically. “Ah, fresh air! Nothing like the great outdoors!”

“Do you not get out much?” Sora asks.

“Comes with the job, my spiky-haired friend. I’ve got more power than most folks could ever dream of in my little finger, but once I’ve granted three wishes it’s back inside that lamp until the next guy picks it up. I’m lucky to see the light of day every century or two.”

No wonder he’s so happy even in the fading - but still sweltering - desert heat, then. Sora wishes he could do something - but he’s not the one with a genie.

“Genie,” Aladdin says slowly. “What if I use my last wish to free you from the lamp?”

Genie almost stops flying. “You’d really do that?”

“It’s a promise. We’ll save Jasmine, and then you’ll be free.”

\---

Jasmine leads Kairi through a rigorously maintained garden toward the palace. The sheer volume of greenery and blossoming flowers is almost enough to make Kairi forget she’s in a city in the middle of the desert.

“We’ll have to be quiet,” Jasmine whispers. “Even if the palace guards aren’t working for Jafar already, they won’t take kindly to an outsider in the palace, whether I’m with you or not.”

“What if there are Heartless around?”

Jasmine looks back at her, a faint frown etching shallow lines in her forehead. “Can you defeat them discreetly?”

“Probably.”

“The less noise we make, the better.” Jasmine stops at the edge of a path working its way around the palace. She points toward an ornate door set into the wall. “That leads to the kitchens. It’s a little far from my father’s chambers, but there are usually less guards around. Security will probably only become tighter the further we go.” She turns back to Kairi, still looking worried. “Are you sure you want to do this? If we’re caught by my father’s guards, I may not be able to get them to stand down.”

“I’m sure,” Kairi says. “I need to find out what Jafar knows.”

Jasmine nods. “Stay close to me.”

She peers down the path in either direction before stepping lightly toward the door. She eases it open and slips partially in, beckoning Kairi forward. The door slides shut silently behind them, and the intense scent of spices in the room is almost enough to make Kairi’s head spin.

A light touch on her arm is enough to ground her again, and she peers over Jasmine's shoulder as the princess cracks open the door out of the kitchen.

“It's clear,” she whispers.

They emerge into an empty corridor, painted with bright primary colors in elaborate patterns. Kairi reluctantly pulls her attention away from the art to follow Jasmine, glancing around nervously at every distant sound.

Jasmine is halfway around a corner before she leaps backward with a gasp, grabbing Kairi’s arm and pulling her into a darkened alcove. “Guards,” she hisses.

“Saw something,” Kairi hears a gruff voice say. Leather rubs against letter, and solid footfalls approach from around the corner. Kairi holds her breath as a tall, broad guard rounds the corner into view. The guard boasts elaborate leather armor with golden trim, and is holding an ornate, but still dangerous-looking, curved sword.

The guard glances around suspiciously, and Kairi sucks in a breath. His eyes look clouded over, glittering with a sinister light. His motions seem stiff, almost wooden. The guard peers into the alcove, and for a heart-stopping second Kairi thinks he’s seen them.

The guard grunts, sheathing his sword. He turns stiffly around and walks back the way he had come. Kairi exhales shakily, sagging against Jasmine’s arm.

“That was too close,” she says. Kairi is inclined to agree.

“Did you see his eyes?” she asks. “Eyes aren’t supposed to look like that.”

“They aren’t,” Jasmine agrees. “I know him, and he’s unfailingly loyal to my father. Jafar must be controlling the palace guards somehow.”

“Then we really need to stay out of sight.” Kairi leans out of the alcove and warily scans the corridor. It seems empty. “Do you know another way to the sultan’s rooms?”

Jasmine bites her lip. “Maybe,” she says. “But I don’t think either of us will like it.”

-

“You were right,” Kairi mumbles into the stone. “I don’t like this.” She shuffles her feet in an attempt to grip more rightly with her toes, and tries desperately not to look down.

“I know,” Jasmine says ruefully from above her. “But this is the best way to avoid as many guards as possible.”

“How did you even know it’s possible to _climb the palace walls_?”

“That’s… I may have a habit of sneaking out.”

Kairi snorts. “Never would have guessed.”

“Was it that obvious?”

She reaches up for the next handhold, feeling a stab of panic when the stone crumbles slightly under her hands. “Well, we did find you creeping around in the streets of Agrabah and you were willing to help me break in, so.”

“Fair enough.” Jasmine leaps to the side, grunting as she hangs for a few moments from just her fingertips. “It’s been a bit since I had to scale the walls, though.” She continues her ascent and Kairi jumps for the freshly vacated handhold.

“How far are the sultan’s rooms?”

“A little farther up,” Jasmine replies. “With any luck, there won’t be any guards actually inside the rooms.”

 _Now that you’ve said it, there could be,_ Kairi thinks. Her arms are shaking, but she forces herself to keep going. She won’t do anyone any good if she falls to her death.

“Here,” Jasmine says. She pulls herself onto a balcony, reaching over to pull Kairi up as well. Kairi nearly collapses on the stone railing when her legs don’t want to support her weight. She hears Jasmine pull on the door and let out a sound of disgust. “It’s locked!”

“I can fix that,” Kairi says. “Just… give me a second.”

Jasmine paces anxiously back and forth as Kairi catches her breath, peering over the edge of the balcony every few cycles. Finally, Kairi gets her feet back under her, though they still feel like jelly. She strides toward the door, summoning the Keyblade into her hand, and taps the lock. It clicks open easily and she gestures grandly with the Keyblade before dismissing it. “After you.”

Jasmine giggles and bows. “Why, thank you.” She hesitates with one hand on the door’s handle before seeming to push through whatever misgivings she had and opening it carefully.

The curtains on the other side of the doors flutter in the wind, and Jasmine slips inside with Kairi close behind.

The room is dimly lit, which at least means there’s no one else there. Papers and clothes are scattered across every available surface, as if whoever was here last didn’t bother to clean up or even keep anything in order in the moment. Kairi goes over to what looks like the door out to the hallway and taps it with the Keyblade to lock it tight. That should buy them time if anyone tries to get in. She crouches down to pick up the nearest paper and squints to make out the writing. It’s something about a tax, so she sets it aside and starts working through the mess. Eventually, she finds one written in a different hand from the rest:

_The “reports” and information the witch provided have proved useful to me. I have enough power now to maintain control over every wretch in this palace. All I must do in return is locate the Keyhole the witch spoke of and capture the princess. Thanks to the Heartless presence, I have narrowed down the whereabouts of the former. Both matters are trivial so long as that fool street rat returns with what I sent him to retrieve._

She was right - Jafar does have at least part of Ansem’s research on the Heartless. She just has to find it in this mess.

“What would this research you’re searching for look like?” Jasmine asks quietly.

“I have no idea,” Kairi admits. “It’ll probably mention darkness, or Heartless, or a Keyhole.”

The two of them search silently, the only sound the rustling of paper. At the bottom of a pile in the corner, she finds a set of papers that look different from the rest. At the top of the first page, _Report 5_ is written in beautifully neat handwriting.

Jasmine makes a small noise of satisfaction from the other side of the room. “Ah! I found… Father?”

Something in her voice makes Kairi stand and follow her into the adjacent room. The first thing she sees is a lavish canopy bed, with bedding and pillows that look fluffy enough to disappear into completely. Fluffy enough, in fact, that she barely notices the short, rotund figure in fine clothing sprawled in the center.

Jasmine approaches him reluctantly with one hand covering her mouth. “Father? Can you hear me?”

So this is the sultan. Kairi had been imagining a more imposing figure than this. She gasps when she gets close enough to notice his eyes - the same swirling fog she had seen in the guard’s eyes.

He hadn’t responded to Jasmine’s voice, either. “You were right about the guards,” Kairi says. “Jafar’s been controlling them, and the sultan is under his spell, too.”

“Poor Father…” Jasmine turns tearfully toward Kairi, and now she feels bad about being disappointed by the sultan’s appearance. “Is there anything you can do about this?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know how he’s doing this. But defeating Jafar might free him and the guards.”

“Then we should hurry,” Jasmine says. She reaches down to rest her hand longingly on the sultan’s arm, and that’s when everything goes wrong.

The sultan lurches into an upright sitting position with a gasp. “Guards!” he shouts. His eyes are still full of the fog. “Intruders!”

There’s a commotion in the hall outside the royal chambers, and Jasmine whirls to face Kairi. “Go,” she says. “You don’t have much time.”

Kairi realizes her plan immediately. “I’m not leaving you here, we just need to hurry-”

“If we both leave, they’ll start searching, and they’ll see us escaping.” Jasmine pushes another set of papers into Kairi’s hands. “If I stay, they’ll be focused on me and you can escape without being caught.”

“We spent all that time getting you _away_ from Jafar!” Loud thumping comes from the door. The magical lock won’t hold for much longer.

“You need to escape with that research, you said yourself it’s important.” She’s already pushing Kairi toward the window. Kairi tries to dig in her heels, but her feet slide across the plush carpeting.

“But Jafar -”

“Can’t do anything to me! Just _listen_ ,” Jasmine insists, and Kairi bites back her next objection. “That woman, Maleficent, she needs me for something. Get out of here, find Sora, and the two of you can stop Jafar before he hands me over to her.” Her expression darkens. “If he thinks I’m going to make it easy for him, he is sorely mistaken.”

There’s a loud crash from the outer room, followed by multiple sets of footsteps.

“We’ll come back for you,” Kairi promises.

Jasmine smiles. “I know you will.”

Kairi vaults over the lip of the window and catches herself on the edge, dropping out of sight just as the guards enter the sultan’s bedroom.

“What is the meaning of this!?” she hears Jasmine demand indignantly.

“The girl Lord Jafar is after!” one of the guards barks. “Seize her!”

“Unhand me - how dare you! Do you even know who I am?”

Kairi bites her lip and begins her descent, trying to tell herself everything will be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do actually have the second half of Agrabah's segment written, because I wanted to finish the chapter and post it before KH3 comes out, but then I finished it yesterday and realized that it was twice as long as most of the already-existing chapters, because I got excited and added my own original stuff. So I decided to just split it in half and have a small buffer, because I doubt I'll have much time to write in between playing KH3 and staying on top of school. If you enjoyed this chapter, feel free to share your thoughts/questions in the comments below! Like many fic writers, I am fueled by praise.
> 
> (PS: if you know what my chapter summaries are referencing, you get... uh... a virtual high five.)
> 
> Next time: Kairi fights a possessed cave.


	6. Third Wish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Jasmine in Jafar's hands, it's a race against time to find and defeat him before he completes his sinister mission. Sora gets some serious air. Kairi makes a leap of faith. Aladdin keeps a promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so. kh3 sure happened.

The carpet lands in the abandoned home, swooping through the window. Sora hops off before it even stops moving, looking around for any sign of Kairi.

“Sorry about the mess,” Aladdin says. “I don’t really get visitors.”

“Wait, you live here?” Sora asks.

“More or less.”

“We thought this place was abandoned,” Goofy says.

Aladdin chuckles. “It was before I moved in.”

“It could definitely use a good cleaning,” Genie comments. “You sure you don’t want me to…” He gestures loosely with one hand, probably indicating an offer to magically clean the place.

“No, that’s fine,” Aladdin says. “I’ve already decided on my last two wishes.”

Rapid footsteps approach outside, and the curtain on the wall is thrown aside as Kairi stumbles into the home, gasping for breath.

“Kairi! What happened?” There are wet streaks on her cheeks, and she’s got a stack of paper crumpled in her clenched fist. “Where’s Jasmine?”

“I - I thought - I messed up,” she says, almost choking on the words. “We snuck into the palace because I thought Jafar would have some of Ansem’s research, and he did, but then we got caught, and” - she takes a deep, shuddering breath - “and he’s controlling the palace guards somehow, and she stayed behind and let herself get captured so I could get away, so now Jafar has her and it’s _my fault._ ”

“Jafar has Jasmine?” Aladdin repeats.

“Wait, start over from the beginning,” Sora says. “How did you guess Jafar would have stuff in the palace?”

Kairi explains, starting with her conversation with Jasmine in this very room and the conversation she had overheard before describing the palace heist. She still looks furious, but maybe slightly calmer.

“So Jafar is after Jasmine and this Keyhole,” Aladdin says.

“That sounds familiar,” Genie muses. “Now where did I hear about that? It’s only been two hundred years…”

“If he already has Jasmine and he needs to deliver her to this Maleficent, we can’t miss our window, then,” Aladdin says decisively. “Let’s find him before that happens and get her back.”

Sora nods. “Yeah, and we’ll stop him from finding the Keyhole!”

“Keyhole, Keyhole, Keyhole, Keyhole, Keyhole…” Genie mutters. “Ah, well. It’ll come to me eventually.”

Kairi rubs her cheeks, leaving dusty smears. “Let’s go.”

They return to the streets, but it’s immediately apparent that none of them know where to start looking. Everyone’s looking at Sora, so he picks a random direction and starts hoping.

Heartless appear to ambush them, naturally. A bunch of pots lying against a wall sprout insectlike legs and scuttle aggressively toward them as a swarm. They’re also fragile, though, only able to take a few hits from the Keyblade before they shatter and release their hearts. Sora hopes they weren’t actually pots that someone had made and that had gotten possessed by Heartless. Could Heartless possess things?

“We’re near the palace,” Kairi says eventually. Sora wonders how she can tell; it feels like he’s just been leading everyone around in circles. “Those are the gates right there.” Oh. That explains it. He can just see a pair of large gates over a row of houses in the way.

“You said earlier he’d made himself at home,” Aladdin says as they round the corner toward the gates. “With any luck, we could just wait for Jafar and ambush him… here…”

Jafar is standing in front of the gates with a sinister grin. Jasmine is standing behind him, looking - for now - unharmed.

“Setting your sights a little high, aren’t you, boy?” he sneers. “Hand it over, and run along back to your little hole. You’ll be troubling the princess no longer.”

“Jasmine!” Aladdin starts to rush forward, and Sora grabs him by the arm, holding him back.

“I’m sorry, Aladdin,” Jasmine says.

The Keyblade falls into Kairi’s hands, and Jafar holds out his arm to block Jasmine from her. “Not so fast, child.”

“Genie,” Aladdin whispers, and Sora looks down to see that his other hand rubbing the lamp, hidden behind his back. “Help Jasmine, please!”

A streak of blue darts across the square, and Genie scoops up Jasmine in an instant, holding her carefully high above the ground. “And that’s number two! You’re making this almost too easy, Al!”

Jafar laughs. “I’m afraid your second wish has been denied.”

There’s a rustling sound, quiet enough that Sora almost misses it, and he turns just in time to see a scrawny parrot snatch the lamp from Aladdin’s hand and start flying across the square with it.

“No!” Aladdin wrenches his arm out of Sora’s grip and lunges for the lamp. He hits an invisible barrier and bounces back, landing hard on the ground as the parrot lands on Jafar’s shoulder, somehow looking just as smug as its master as he lifts the lamp triumphantly.

“Sorry, Al!” Genie shouts, disappearing into a cloud of blue smoke. Jasmine falls with a scream into one of the Heartless pots, which sprouts just a single pair of spindly legs.

“And now, I bid you farewell.” Jafar waves his serpent staff. “Attack!”

He vanishes into thin air as the square erupts with Heartless. Individual pots join together in a long chain, with another bug-like Heartless forming the head of a pot centipede. Jasmine calls Aladdin’s name from somewhere in the roiling tangle of clay and legs.

Sora dives in, swinging his staff wildly. the pot centipede breaks apart, flying in different directions, and he follows up by slamming a fireball into the head. He sees Kairi and the others attacking the scattered pots, calling out Jasmine’s name.

She cries out again, and something about it is weird but Sora can’t stop to figure out what because he’s waist deep in angry pots. One of them jumps on him, and he casts Aero in a panic and watches the sudden gust of wind hurl it away. It slams into the wall, cracks appearing in its sides, and Kairi lunges forward to finish it off with the Keyblade.

The pot centipede reforms and scuttles off, breaking through a haphazard barricade and into the street it had been blocking off.

Sora chases after them, summoning the Keyblade. He _leaps_ , his stomach doing a backflip as he floats high above the pots before slamming down into the center. The resulting magic-enhanced shockwave from hitting the ground - something he had borrowed from Cloud’s Sonic Blade notes - shatters several of the pots instantly, and hearts float up into the air around him. He still has no idea how the floating works, but he’s pretty sure it made him look _extremely_ cool just now.

Jasmine cries out again. It’s hard to keep track with how much they’re moving, but he’s pretty sure he already smashed the pot her voice was coming from earlier. Which means…

The Keyblade disappears from his hands as the others catch up to him and Kairi dashes into the fray, swinging wildly. Sora casts Thunder to soften them up, and they make short work of the last of the Heartless.

And Jasmine isn’t there.

“Jasmine?” Aladdin shouts.

Jafar’s disembodied voice cackles, echoing in the narrow street.

“She’s… not here?” Kairi asks.

“She never was,” Sora realizes. That was what had been weird - her calls for Aladdin had been the exact same _every single time_. “Jafar must have taken her with him when he disappeared, and was just, I don’t know, projecting her voice into the pots or something!”

“To the desert,” Aladdin says firmly. “Let’s move!”

He turns on a dime and dashes through the streets, and the others have to sprint to keep up with him. Goofy scoops Donald and up and carries him when his shorter duck legs cause him to start falling behind.

“Why are we going back into the desert?” Sora pants.

“The Keyhole won’t be in Agrabah, or Jafar would have found it on his own,” Aladdin explains. He barely sounds out of breath; he must be used to running like this. “And the way Genie reacted to it means he must have seen it somewhere. I found his lamp in the Cave of Wonders.”

“So you think the Keyhole is there somewhere?” Kairi asks.

“It’s got to be. We just need to get there before Jafar finds it.”

No one is around to stop the ragtag group as they tear out of the city gate and into the desert. It’s shockingly cold compared to the heat earlier in the day, but at least he’s not going to get heatstroke in their mad dash for… wherever the Cave of Wonders is. “How far away is it?”

“It’s…” Aladdin slows down as he trails off, looking dejected. “Pretty far, actually.”

“Where’s that carpet when you need it?” Goofy laments.

“I have an idea,” Kairi says. She puts two fingers in her mouth and _whistles_ , so loudly that the sound echoes off of the nearby dunes.

“Ow,” Sora complains.

“Sorry.”

“Do you think it worked?” Goofy asks.

Donald quacks. “There it is!”

The carpet swoops over a dune and circles the group, and Sora is reminded again of an eager puppy.

“Wow,” Kairi says. “I really wasn’t expecting that to work.”

“Wait, you just wanted to whistle like that,” Sora accuses.

Kairi shrugs. “Perhaps.”

“We need to get to the Cave of Wonders,” Aladdin tells the carpet. “Can you take us there?”

The carpet nods enthusiastically and flattens out, letting them all climb on. It’s a tight fit, and the carpet definitely sags in the middle, but it still soars over the sand fast enough for the wind to sting Sora’s face.

He’s thoroughly chilled by the time the carpet slows as it approaches a weird-looking mound of sand. They disembark, and the ground rumbles as the mound of sand erupts, throwing up the grains into a cloud as it grows larger. It takes the shape of a feline head and roars at them.

“Something’s wrong,” Aladdin says. “It didn’t do that last time.”

Kairi gasps. “Look at its eyes!”

Sora looks up. Its eyes are glowing with a deep purple light that flickers like flames.

“It feels like the Heartless,” she says.

“Do you think it’s being controlled like those palace guards were?” Goofy asks.

His question is answered as spheres of light shoot from the Cave’s eyes toward them, and Kairi hauls Sora out of the way. The spheres leave smoking craters in the sand where they hit.

“We need to do something to stop it so we can get inside,” Aladdin says.

“Leave it to us,” Sora says, already running at the Cave. He summons the Keyblade and chucks it at one of the eyes. It impacts and rockets away, disappearing as it spins, and the Cave reels, roaring. The flames from that eye look dimmer now.

He dodges another glowing sphere as Kairi runs forward, doing the same thing to its other eye. This time when the Cave roars, its mouth gapes open and a troop of Bandits spill out. The others join in, accompanied by Donald’s screechy battle quack. Kairi ignores the Bandits and starts climbing up to the eyes.

Sora ducks a Fat Bandit’s fire breath - still extremely unfair - and freezes it with Blizzard before knocking its feet out from under it so he can hack at its head.

The Keyblade disappears, and a few seconds later there’s a muffled explosion and Kairi screams. He turns around in time to see her hit the ground and roll, and looks up to see that the dark flames have completely vanished from its left eye, turning it a golden yellow.

“How did you _do_ that?” he asks.

“I have no idea,” she says. “But I’m gonna do it again.”

She does, charging at the Cave’s other side and leaving Sora to fend off the Heartless. Magic seems to do a pretty good job at defeating them at least.

The Cave roars again, and Kairi lands lightly at its base as it grows still with its mouth gaping open. She tosses the Keyblade at the last Heartless, a nervous-looking bandit, and it spins through the air and passes _through_ the Heartless as it vanishes from the impact. Sora holds out his hand, expecting the Keyblade to warp into it, but instead the it turns, still spinning, and slams into his hand with enough unexpected force to make him stumble back.

No more Heartless appear, and the sand head doesn’t move.

“Okay,” Aladdin says. “Let’s go.”

He steps into the mouth. Sora warily follows him, half expecting the mouth to slam shut and start chewing. But it doesn’t, and he keeps walking, until he’s following Aladdin down a flight of sandstone stairs.

“Be careful not to touch anything,” Aladdin warns. “The cave doesn’t like it when people get greedy.”

“This cave seems pretty quick to anger,” Sora mutters.

The Cave of Wonders turns out to be a labyrinth of deadly traps and Heartless, and Sora loses count of how many times he dodges a swipe from one and nearly falls into a seemingly bottomless pit. And how many times he and Kairi yank each other back before either of them can be killed by spike walls or jets of flame. And how many times Donald veers toward a glittering pile of jewels and coins only to be hauled back by the collar.

There’s a lot to keep track of.

They eventually find their way into a room filled with literal mountains of gold. Sora’s pretty sure all of them swivel to keep an eye on Donald.

“This looks familiar,” Aladdin says. “I think the room where I found Genie’s lamp is just up ahead.” There’s a passageway at the other side of the room, leading into darkness.

“I hope the Keyhole really is in there,” Goofy says.

Kairi frowns. “ _Something_ is definitely in there.”

“More Heartless?” Sora asks.

“Maybe. It’s dark, whatever it is.”

Sora raises a questioning eyebrow. Kairi nods. As one, they turn and run into the passage with Aladdin, Donald, and Goofy hot on their heels.

Up ahead, Sora can hear muffled voices.

“- that boy Riku?” says the oily voice of Jafar. Sora tries to make himself run even faster.

He emerges into a cavernous, circular chamber, lit by glowing gems high out of reach. Jafar is standing at the opposite end, on top of a ledge in front of a giant keyhole-shaped carving in the wall. Sora can see the actual Keyhole set into its center, looking like part of the design. There’s a woman standing next to Jafar, wearing a billowing black robe and holding a staff with a sickly green orb. Her face looks ashen and waxy, and a pair of horns extends from the headdress wrapped around her head. Her expression sharpens when she notices Sora and the others run in.

“Doing so may actually prove useful to our - ” Jafar breaks off, turning around, and his mouth twists. “Ah. The brats.”

Sora can’t tear his focus away from the woman. “Are you -”

“You’re Maleficent, aren’t you?” Kairi says.

The woman doesn’t respond, just stares at them. Her gaze drifts over Kairi, and her lips slide upward in a satisfied smile before her form freezes and fades into thin air.

“Let Jasmine go!” Aladdin shouts. Now that Maleficent is gone, Sora notices Jasmine, lying unconscious on the ground at Jafar’s feet.

“Not a chance,” Jafar sneers. “She is a princess, after all.”

“Obviously,” Sora retorts. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“She is one of seven who somehow hold the key to opening the door,” Jafar continues, glaring at him.

Sora blinks, the voice from his dream echoing in his head. _You are the one who will open the door_. The same door?

“What door?” Kairi asks.

“That’s quite irrelevant, because you fools won’t live to see what lies beyond it.”

“You said that already,” Sora says. He pulls his staff off of his back. “Bring it on, you crusty old fart.”

“Genie!” Jafar commands. “My second wish: _crush them_.”

“Genie, no!” Aladdin shouts.

“Sorry, Al,” Genie says, already drifting over to them despondently. “The one with the lamp calls the shots. Watch out, by the way.” Almost in slow motion, he raises his arms. Aladdin has enough of a warning to dodge out of the way, and Genie’s blue fists slam into the ground, leaving a crack. Sora feels a wave of relief. The Genie may have to follow Jafar’s orders, but the rules must not be strict enough to prevent him from doing a really bad job.

Jafar rises into the air, and flames burst to life on the end of his staff. He starts chanting, drawing a ring of flames that splits, sending balls of fire out toward all of them. Sora responds with his own fireball, which Jafar swats away.

Sora nods at Kairi, and the two of them approach Jafar, leaving the other three to “fight” Genie. Jafar seems to take an extra vindictive pleasure in hurling flames and dark energy at the two of them, especially when Sora keeps deflecting the shots he aims toward Aladdin.

It’s still two against one, in the end, and Jafar is gradually worn down, his expression and gestures becoming more and more desperate. When Kairi extinguishes his staff with a precise Blizzard, he swipes his staff through the air, sending out a blast of wind that hurls them backwards.

“Enough of this!” he snarls. “Genie! My final wish: make me an all-powerful genie!”

Genie’s face falls.

“He can do that!?” Sora asks.

“Genie, you _can’t_ ,” Aladdin says desperately.

“I can’t not do it,” Genie says sadly. “The one with the lamp calls the shots, remember?” He covers his eyes and turns away from Jafar, grimacing even as he extends his finger. A stream of sparks shoots out and streaks toward Jafar, hitting him in the chest.

Jafar starts laughing, even as the chamber shakes and he begins glowing too brightly to see, forcing Sora to cover his eyes. Rocks from the ceiling slam into the ground around him, and even Jafar’s manic laughter is drowned out by the sound of collapsing stone.

Then suddenly, everything stops. Sora lowers his hand slowly - and scrambles away from the edge of a pit with a yelp. All that’s left of the chamber is a ring of the floor around the pit and the ledges on the sides.

Sora clambers up one of the ledges to join Aladdin, accepting a boost from Kairi before turning to help her up after him. He’s crouched over Jasmine, holding one of her hands in his. Her chest rises and falls slowly.

“Is she okay?” he asks.

“She’s just asleep,” Aladdin says, sounding relieved. He stands up, brushing off his pants. “Come on. We still need to take care of Jafar.”

“How are we supposed to defeat an ‘all-powerful genie’?” Kairi asks.

Aladdin grins at her. “It’s like Genie said. Whoever holds a genie’s lamp calls the shots.”

Sora stands on the end of the ledge and looks down into the pit. It opens into a massive, lava-filled cavern, and he can feel the heat on his face from all the way up here.

“Well,” Kairi says from next to him. “Here goes nothing.” And she dives into the pit.

“Kairi!” Sora jumps after her without thinking, pointing himself downward so he can catch up with her. There are platforms rising from the lava, probably still part of the Cave of Wonders, but they’re still falling way too fast. He tackles her around the middle and screws his eyes shut, trying to think light thoughts. _Pillows. Feathers, Dandelion seeds. Bubbles. Snowflakes._

The ground arrives suddenly and they bounce, the impact jarring Kairi out of Sora’s arms. He rolls to a stop at the edge of the platform, bruised but somehow uninjured.

“How do you keep _doing_ that?” Kairi asks.

Sora rolls away from the edge onto his back, splaying out his arms and legs. “No idea.”

Donald, Goofy, and Aladdin drift down to join them, buoyed by Donald’s magic. Maybe he’s just doing something magical like that without realizing it.

As soon as their feet touch the platform, the lava below erupts and an enormous crimson figure towers over them with Jafar’s all-too-familiar cackle. The parrot from before frantically flies past them, holding a dark gray lamp.

“We’ll keep him occupied,” Kairi says. “You go get Jafar’s lamp.”

Sora sees why he’s been tapped for lamp duty; if anyone tried to jump to another platform and fell short, they’d end up cooked by the lava. “Got it.” He backs up for a running start and leaps after the parrot.

“Hey, Jafar!” Kairi shouts as he goes. “You look even uglier as a genie!”

It’s surprisingly agile; when he’s close enough he swipes for the lamp and the parrot swerves out of the way, turning around before Sora even lands. He hurls a Blizzard, hoping to coat its wings in frost and slow it down, but the magic fizzles out in the heat before it reaches the parrot. He’s just going to have to hope it tires itself out.

He jumps from platform to platform after the parrot, trying to keep his mind off the oppressive heat. Covering himself in magical ice can only do so much, really. Every time he gets within arm’s reach of the parrot, it pulls off a last second dodge.

“Sora, hurry!” Kairi shouts. She yelps as Goofy dives in front of her and somehow deflects the giant, half-molten boulder Jafar had thrown at her with his shield.

“I’m trying!” he yells back. The parrot _has_ to tire out eventually. It’s flying around a lava-filled cavern carrying a lamp made of pure metal! “Every time I get close enough, it flies away!”

“Then give yourself a longer reach, stupid!”

What was _that_ supposed to - oh. _Oh._

Sora jumps after the parrot again as it makes a break for the main platform, pulling his staff off his back. When the parrot crosses over the platform, he lines his staff up as well as he can and swings. The staff catches the parrot’s wing and sends it tumbling to the ground, the lamp clattering across the stone. Sora lands and dives for it, scooping it up with his free hand and rolling to his feet. “JAFAR!” he shouts, holding up the lamp. “Party’s over!”

Jafar turns to look at him, and his eyes widen when he sees the lamp in Sora’s hand. “What -”

“Back to your lamp!” he orders. A stream of swirling crimson light shines from the lamp’s spout, trapping Jafar in a glowing vortex that begins pulling him down into the lamp. Jafar lets out a yell of inarticulate fury that cuts off suddenly as he disappears completely, and all that’s left of Jafar is his lamp and Genie’s, sitting quietly on the ground.

For a moment, everything is still as Aladdin scoops up Genie’s lamp. Then with a shudder the platform under their feet starts rising slowly, carrying them back up to the chamber with the Keyhole.

“So,” Sora says into the silence. “It’s probably a bad idea to ask Jafar for three wishes, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Definitely.”

“It’s a terrible idea.”

“But what if -” Donald starts.

Everyone rounds on him at once. “No!”

The platform they’re on joins seamlessly with the rest of the chamber’s floor, and Sora climbs up onto the ledge with the Keyhole only to stop dead in his tracks.

Jasmine is gone.

He hears a sharp intake of breath behind him, and Aladdin rushes forward. “Jasmine!?”

Kairi steps up silently next to him. He doesn’t need to look at her to guess what she’s thinking, because he’s thinking the exact same thing: they failed Jasmine, just like they failed Alice. He takes her hand, squeezes it gently. _I know. I’m sorry._

She squeezes back. _Thank you._

The Keyblade shines in her other hand, and she raises it to point it at the Keyhole. The same brilliant light shines out of it, amplifying drastically when it touches the Keyhole. The echoing _click_ rings out again. The carved stone around the Keyhole starts glowing now too, filling up with a bright golden sand that comes from out of nowhere. When the larger keyhole carving is filled, the sand flashes with a blinding light, leaving only unblemished stone.

“Wow,” Aladdin whispers.

The chamber starts to shake, more violently than it had earlier. The ornate lamps high on the walls come loose and fall to the ground, already crumbling on the way down. The carpet flies in and stops in front of them so fast Sora can hear the fabric flapping, seeming even more agitated than before. Kairi jumps on, followed by Donald and Goofy.

Sora grabs Aladdin by the arm when he doesn’t want to move. “But - Jasmine!”

“Wherever she is, she’s not in here!” he says. “We need to get out!”

Aladdin lets himself be pulled onto the carpet, and it shoots off faster than it’s ever flown before, careening through the crumbling Cave of Wonders to reach the outside world.

\--

“She’s really just gone?” Aladdin asks. His home is mostly dark, lit only by the moonlight shining through the hole in the wall. “To another world?”

“Yeah,” Kairi says.

“Then let’s go. It sounds like we have a lot of ground to cover.”

“You… can’t come with us,” Sora says slowly.

“What? Why not?”

“Because,” Goofy says. “That would be mud… middle…”

“Meddling,” Donald says.

“I know it’s a dumb rule, considering we’re also hopping around other worlds, but we don’t really know enough to make exceptions,” Kairi explains.

“Plus there are only four seats on our ship, and sharing is really uncomfortable,” Sora adds.

“We’ll find Jasmine. I promise.”

“Hello, Earth to Al,” Genie announces, appearing out of nowhere. “You still have one wish left! Go on, say the word and I’ll have her back in a jiffy!”

Aladdin looks up at him, smiling. “Genie, I wish -”

“Yeeees?”

“For your freedom.”

Genie stops his dramatic posturing. “What?”

With twin pops, the golden cuffs on his wrist disappear into puffs of vapor. The wispy tail below his belt splits and solidifies, becoming two thick legs.

“A deal’s a deal,” Aladdin says, grinning. “Now you’re your own master. Nothing’s stopping you from going wherever you want.”

“Al…”

“But, it would be great if you could go with Sora and Kairi and help them find Jasmine,” he continues.

Genie considers this for a moment, crossing his arms. “Hm, sorry, Al. I’m done taking orders from others.”

Aladdin’s face falls. “Yeah, that’s fair -”

“But a _favor_ to a friend, now that’s entirely different!” he announces. “We are friends, aren’t we, Al?”

“Of course we are.”

Genie stretches, making the motion as exaggerated as possible. He snaps his fingers, and a floral shirt and necklace of flowers appear out of nowhere. “Well! I’m off to do some sightseeing. Just give the ol’ lamp a rub if you ever need a hand and I’ll come running. Thirty minutes or less, or the assistance is free.” He disappears in a puff of blue smoke.

Aladdin chuckles. “Well, you heard him. You’ll probably need this.” He hands over the lamp, and Sora accepts it. In his hand, it starts to glow softly before it shrinks down. A small chain appears with a soft flash at the top.

“Whoa,” he whispers.

Aladdin doesn’t seem to notice. “If I can’t go look for her, I’m glad it’s you two,” he says. “I know you’ll be able to bring her back safely.”

Kairi smiles weakly. “We’ll do our best.”

Sora waits until they’re on the way back out to the ship before getting a better look at the shrunken lamp. “So why did the lamp change like this?”

“It’s a keychain!” Goofy says. He doesn’t elaborate, leaving Sora to connect the dots himself.

“You mean for the Keyblade?”

“Yup. Keychains are what determine a Keyblade’s appearance, and even give it special abilities. You’ve got the Kingdom Key, but if you add that lamp to it now, you can change what it looks like.”

Sora summons the Keyblade and clips the lamp keychain onto it, next to the original keychain - a small icon made of two circles attached to one side of a slightly larger circle. Immediately, the Keyblade glows brightly, changing shape in his hands. When the glow fades, the teeth of the key have curved back toward the handle, which is now rounded into a distinct heart shape, and glittering with metallic gold, orange, and blue.

“Whoa,” he and Kairi whisper in unison. He dismisses the Keyblade. “So what does it let the Keyblade do?”

“No idea,” Goofy says. “You’ll just have to find out yourself.”

Sora pouts.

“Oh!” Kairi says suddenly. “I completely forgot about the reports!” She digs into her pocket and pulls out a wad of folded, slightly crumpled paper.

“Oh, right! What do they say?”

Kairi squints down at the pages. “This one is labeled ‘One’...” She starts reading aloud as they walk.

> _Much of my life has been dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge._
> 
> _That knowledge has guarded this world well. Not a soul doubts that._
> 
> _I am blessed with people's smiles and respect. But though I am called a sage, there are things I do not understand._
> 
> _I believe darkness sleeps in every heart, no matter how pure. Given the chance, the smallest drop can spread and swallow the heart. I have witnessed it many times._
> 
> _Darkness...Darkness of the heart. How is it born?_
> 
> _How does it come to affect us so?_
> 
> _As ruler of this world, I must find the answers. I must find them before the world is lost to those taken by the darkness._

“And this one looks like it was written a little later, it’s labeled as the fifth one.”

> _To study the Heartless behavior, I picked one out for observation. It wiggled its antennae and, as if sensing a target, headed deep into the castle. In the deepest part of the castle, its antennae began vibrating, as if searching for something. Suddenly, a strange door appeared. I'd never known of its existence._
> 
> _It had a large keyhole, but didn't seem to be locked. So I opened the door. What I saw on the other side mystified me. What was that powerful mass of energy? That night I observed a great meteor shower in the sky. Could it be related to the door that I have opened?_

“Is he talking about the Keyhole of his world?” Sora wonders.

“The Heartless were attracted to it, and we know they want to enter the Keyholes, so maybe,” Kairi says.

“‘Darkness sleeps in every heart,’” he repeats. “That’s ominous.”

“Maybe it’s a metaphor.”

“A metaphor of what?”

“I don’t know, of… Of… Ugh, never mind. I just don’t want to think about that being literal, okay?”

“Sure.” Sora looks up at the sky, trying to match the stars with any of the constellations he remembers. Not a single one lines up, and he makes himself ignore how much that fact makes him want to cry. “So if that second one is the fifth, then there are at least three more reports out there, right?”

“Right. Maybe even more.”

The reports, the Heartless, Alice, Jasmine… “We have a lot to do, huh.”

Kairi sighs. “Yeah. We do.”

\---

“You’re a fool,” Maleficent sneers.

Riku barely hears her; he’s too busy trying not to throw up. Or pass out. Doing neither of those things would be ideal.

“What did I tell you about returning here directly with the girl?”

“Don’t,” he says shortly.

“And yet you did. Why is that, I wonder? What made you feel that disobeying me would be a wise course of action?”

With each new breath, his nausea fades slightly - but not enough. His skin is still burning from his contact with the darkness. “Thought I could handle it,” he grits out. “I managed it on the way there.”

“When you didn’t have a passenger,” Maleficent snaps. She leans over him, her face coming uncomfortably close to his. “The darkness is not a tool that can be taken lightly. Missteps in judgement will only hasten your downfall - as that old fool Jafar has so kindly shown you. Do not let his lesson be in vain.” She leans even closer, close enough that he can smell her breath. “Your next mistake may not be one the darkness forgives so easily.”

She steps back, and Riku starts breathing again. “Bring the girl,” she says. Already treating him like some servant so soon after pretending to care about him. “You’re coming with me to meet with the others. There is business to discuss.”

Snarky remarks well up in his chest, and he shoves them down. He deliberately waits until she’s out of the room to scoop up the kidnapped princess, still unconscious. Whatever Maleficent had done to make her sleep didn’t seem to be fading anytime soon. “Sorry,” he whispers to her. “But I need to do this.”

He takes his time following Maleficent. He’s not letting her make him rush if he can help it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's it for agrabah! i'm not sure how long the next chapter will take; i finished kh3 a while ago and then immediately started developing a new crossover au so i haven't actually written more than half a page of the next chapter.
> 
> this particular au will also be going all the way through kh3! so buckle up, i'm in for the long haul (even if i get a little sidetracked sometimes). again, if you're enjoying the story, feel free to let me know! i love hearing about which parts people liked.
> 
> EDIT 2/13/19: I made a sideblog for reblogging KH stuff and talking about my fics! it's [over here](https://sorikaimutual.tumblr.com), for those interested!
> 
> next time: the team goes for a swim.


	7. The Grotto and the Sea Witch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a brief stop in Traverse Town, the traveling heroes find themselves unexpectedly far from dry land. Sora loses his shirt. Kairi speaks her mind. Ariel follows her heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD IM SO SORRY YALL HERE TAKE THIS

“Sora,” Merlin says sternly, halting the lesson abruptly. Sora snaps to attention, like he’d just been caught breaking some kind of rule. “You never mentioned your affinity for gravity magic.”

He blinks. “My what?”

Merlin throws his hands up in exasperation. “Just what sort of arcane education do you two have?”

“Yours,” Kairi says flatly. “We didn’t know any magic at all until about a week ago.”

Merlin freezes for a second before lowering his arms and clearing his throat. “Yes. Well. It’s not uncommon for users of magic to have an instinctive understanding of one or more branches of magic. For those with an affinity, magic belonging to that branch is the most likely to be performed unconsciously or without being specifically trained.”

“He’s been slowing down his falls lately,” Kairi says.

“Ohhh, I  _ thought _ that might be magic.”

“You were correct,” Merlin tells him. “Reducing the pull of gravity, and increasing it, are forms of space-manipulating magic. You’re lucky, it’s quite the useful branch.”

“Whoa,” Sora says. He grins. “Cool!”

“Are you going to teach us some gravity magic?” Kairi asks.

Merlin taps his wand against his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t see why not.”

One brain-squeezing magic lesson later, Sora and Kairi make their way across Traverse Town to Cid’s shop.

“So we’ve got Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, Cure, Aero, Stop, and Gravity,” Sora lists, counting off on his fingers. “And Merlin said something about higher tiers for next time.”

“Can we even handle higher tiers yet?” Kairi wonders. “It’s been a week, and I don’t  _ feel _ like I have more magic to work with.”

“Nah, we’re definitely getting better. That session lasted like, three hours, and the first one was maybe half an hour.”

“Huh.”

“That can’t be all the magic we can learn, though, right? Merlin did that whole thing with his furniture, that’s not any of the elemental types we have.”

“Maybe it’s more complicated than he thinks we can handle.”

“Whatever, we can handle it. We’re supposed to save the worlds, right?”

“Supposedly,” Kairi mutters. Some saviors they are, if they couldn’t even save Alice or Jasmine.

“Hey, we’ve sealed every Keyhole so far! And it’s not like we’ve  _ not _ saved people. We just haven’t saved them  _ yet. _ ”

“I just…” Kairi sighs.

Sora grabs her hand and squeezes. “I know,” he says softly. “We’re gonna find them.”

He releases her hand to push open the door to Cid’s shop. Or rather, Cid’s  _ empty _ shop. It doesn’t look abandoned - the shelves are still fully stocked, and there’s no dust. The only thing missing is Cid himself. Sora starts poking around, as if thinking that if he messes with enough merchandise Cid will spontaneously appear to scold him for it.

“Where did Mr. Cid go?” Kairi wonders.

“Hey, there’s something over here,” Sora says. “A puppet?”

Kairi follows Sora to the side of the shop’s counter. There’s a wooden puppet, maybe about one-third her size, splayed out on the ground with one arm stretched out below the counter, like it’s reaching for something underneath.

“Well, as I live and breathe!” Jiminy exclaims. “It’s Pinocchio!”

“Who?”

The puppet perks up, withdrawing its arm from under the counter, and Kairi stumbles backwards in surprise. “Oh! Hi, Jiminy,” it - or he, since the puppet has been carved to look like a little boy and is apparently alive - says.

Jiminy hops down from Kairi’s shoulder, walking toward Pinocchio. “What in the world are you doing down here?”

“Um… Playing hide and seek.” Pinocchio moves his hand - which seems to be holding something - behind his back.

“I just don’t believe it,” Jiminy says, amazed. “Here I was, up all night, just worried sick about you. Of all the - Pinocchio!”

“Did his nose just get longer?” Sora whispers to Kairi.

Pinocchio reaches up to prod at his nose, which is definitely longer. As he does, Kairi catches another glimpse of the thing in his hand: a bright gummi block.

Jiminy places his hands on his hips sternly. “Pinocchio, are you telling me the truth?”

“Yes,” he says. His nose grows another inch.

“Then what do you have in your hand?” Jiminy doesn’t sound convinced.

“It was a present,” Pinocchio says defensively. His nose grows again.

“I think it does that when he lies,” Kairi whispers.

“That’s really weird,” Sora whispers back.

“You know you’re not supposed to tell lies,” Jiminy admonishes. “A lie only grows and grows until you get caught!”

Well, that makes the nose thing make more sense. Still pretty weird, though.

“But if you want something, why wait?” Pinocchio asks. “Why not just take it?”

“Who told you that!?” Jiminy asks, aghast.

Kairi crouches down in front of the puppet. “The things you want could already belong to someone else,” she says. “If someone took something that belonged to you, you’d be sad, right?”

“I guess so,” Pinocchio says slowly. His nose shines and shrinks back to its original size. “But I need it to find Father! The old man who was here said these things take you to other worlds!”

“Geppetto isn’t with you?” Jiminy asks.

Pinocchio shakes his head. “I don’t know where he went. I wound up here and I can’t find him.”

“We can look for him!” Sora says. “We’ve got a gummi ship, so we can search all kinds of worlds for him!”

“Really? Can I come with you?”

“Now hold on,” Jiminy says. “It’s dangerous out there! I’ll go find Geppetto with these nice people, so you just sit tight.”

Pinocchio’s face falls. “Oh. Okay.”

“I know you want to find him, but he wouldn’t want to see you get hurt,” Jiminy says gently. “In the meantime, why don’t you see what you can do to help people out?”

“I guess I can.”

“Hey, don’t worry,” Sora says. “We’ll be back with your dad before you know it!”

Pinocchio nods, giving him a weak smile.

Kairi glances back as they leave the shop. Pinocchio is staring down at the gummi piece, his head tilted to one side.

\---

It’s not hard for Riku to find Maleficent in the vast, gloomy castle; she’s almost always in the high-ceilinged chamber where she’s keeping the girls she’ll only call “the Princesses.” She’s there now, standing over the glass chamber housing the girl from Agrabah.

She senses him there without turning around. “Is there a problem with your accommodations?” she asks, with a tone that says she expects him to be perfectly happy with a damp, dark room that feels more like a dungeon than a living space.

“What exactly is your goal here?” he asks. “And why should I go along with it?”

She turns around, raising one eyebrow imperiously. “Do you see any other options?”

“Humor me. I grabbed those two Princesses for you. What’s in all this for me?”

She tilts her head condescendingly, and a tiny smile tugs at the corners of her lips. “Tell me, Riku: what is the one thing you want most in all the worlds?”

He pauses. What  _ does _ he want? A week ago, he would have said “seeing other worlds,” but since then he’s gotten a little too much of that. And now he doesn’t even have a world to go back to, and Sora and Kairi have apparently abandoned him. “I want my home back.”

“Impossible,” Maleficent says, and even though he was expecting that answer it doesn’t hurt any less. “Your world was consumed by darkness, as you very well know.”

He grits his teeth. “Then why are you asking me -”

“Because there is something that will give you the impossible: Kingdom Hearts.”

“Am I supposed to know what that is?”

“Kingdom Hearts has the power to destroy and create worlds, grant your deepest desires and worst fears,” Maleficent says. “And to unlock it, one only needs seven hearts of pure light - those of the Princesses of Heart.”

“And you have six.” If she’s actually telling him the truth… he wants his home and his friends back. Maybe this Kingdom Hearts can give him both.

“The seventh is hidden, but not for much longer. I will find her, and once she is within my grasp you and I will have our prize.”

One more Princess. And then he can do whatever he wants.

\---

Sora inhales water, and doesn’t drown.

His legs won’t move right either; when he looks down he just sees a smooth dolphin tail instead of a pair of legs. “Whoa.”

“ _ SORA! _ ” Kairi shouts behind him. Her voice sounds tight - panicked?

He whirls around, alarmed. He overbalances and ends up on his side in the water. “What!?”

Instead of looking scared, she’s holding back laughter. “Where’s your  _ shirt _ !?” she wheezes, and the laughter bursts out.

Sora looks down. Not just his shirt -  _ all _ of his clothes are gone, even his necklace, leaving just the strap attached to his staff. Kairi still has her tank top - or some of it. It kind of looks shorter. The tail replacing her legs looks like his, but it’s more silvery instead of blue. Her daggers have turned into a pair of short harpoons. 

“It’s not  _ that _ funny,” he says. Kairi keeps cackling anyway, spinning slowly in the water until she’s nearly upside down. “Donald, why is my shirt gone?” He definitely isn’t whining. He doesn’t whine.

“Don’t look at me,” Donald says. He’s also stuck upside down; his legs replaced with the tentacles of a squid. He drifts downward, glaring up at Sora. “I don’t choose what the magic disguises us as.”

“It’s  _ your _ magic!”

“It’s  _ complicated _ !”

“I think it’s pretty fun,” Goofy says, swimming lazily by as a sea turtle. “Wait a sec - did you hear that?”

Kairi slowly rights herself, and Sora listens. 

“Ariel, wait! Slow down! Don’t leave me behind!”

The voice comes from below them, faint enough that if he hadn’t been listening, Sora wouldn’t have heard it. Goofy must have really sharp ears.

Three shapes emerge from a hole in the rock below them: a girl with a scaly green fish tail - an actual  _ mermaid _ \- a yellow and blue fish, and a small crab. The first two stop when they notice Sora and the others; the crab shoots past them and comes face to face with Donald. The crab yells in surprise, with the same voice Sora had just heard.

Sora tries to maneuver himself lower; Kairi seems to be having the same trouble. He’s not used to not having legs.

The mermaid laughs as the crab frantically swims to hide behind her. “Relax, Sebastian,” she says gently. “They don’t look like they’re with  _ them _ , right, Flounder?”

“I don’t know,” the fish says, peeking out from behind her tail. “There’s something weird about them.”

Sora shoots a glare at Donald. So much for a  _ disguise. _

Kairi laughs nervously. “What do you mean?”

The mermaid - Ariel? - swims around them, looking thoughtful. “They do seem a little different,” she says. “Where are you from?”

“We’re… from kind of far away,” Kairi says.

“And we’re not really used to these waters,” Sora chimes in.

She nods sagely. “Well, in that case, we can help you get acclimated!”

“What?” the crab exclaims. “Ariel, King Triton will not like this!”

“Don’t  _ worry _ , Sebastian,” Ariel says, rolling her eyes. “It should only take a little bit. He won’t even know.” She swims backward with a light flick of her fins. “Try to follow me, you two.”

With a lot of arm-waving, Sora manages to get himself pointed forward. He and Kairi chase after Ariel in the water, with the mermaid stopping to give them advice constantly.

“Try to keep your movements smaller,” she says gently. “Just a little bit goes a long way.”

Sora adjusts, and Ariel smiles at him. “You’re a natural.”

“Ariel!” Sebastian cries. “They’re back!” A shaking claw points down the hole they had emerged from earlier, directly at a group of jellyfish-like creatures bearing the Heartless emblem.

Ariel gasps. “Quickly, follow me!” She swims away from the Heartless, down another passage in the rock, and disappears behind a sharp corner. Sebastian and Flounder dart for an open clam and pull it shut, enclosing themselves inside it.

Sora doesn’t follow Ariel. He and Kairi exchange a sharp nod, and he swings his staff over his shoulder as the Keyblade appears in her hands.

They strike in tandem, and the Heartless feel weirdly squishy when he hits them. Probably because they’re jellyfish. Maybe there are Heartless that look like other animals too.

One of the Heartless lashes out at him while he’s distracted, leaving a stinging welt on his arm where he hastily blocks it. He swings at it, sending it careening toward Kairi for her to dispatch.

When a second wave of Heartless doesn’t appear, Sora relaxes and puts away his staff.

“That was incredible!” Ariel calls, swimming back toward them. She stops above the clam and knocks on it. When nothing happens, she sighs and knocks again.

“Go away, monsters!” comes Sebastian’s voice from inside the clam.

“It’s me, Sebastian,” she says. “The visitors defeated them all.”

The clam opens slowly, and Sebastian gives them a suspicious glare. “Are you sure they’re gone?”

“Those creatures chased us all the way out here,” Ariel explains.

Sebastian gasps. “They could be heading for the palace, too!”

“Let’s go back, then!”

“But wh-what if we run into more on the way back?” Flounder stammers.

“Leave that to us,” Kairi says. “We’ll make sure you get to the palace safely.”

“We will?” Sora asks.

“We  _ will _ ,” Kairi repeats, sending him a Look.

Ariel clasps Kairi’s hands excitedly. “That’s wonderful, thank you!”

Kairi smiles at her, looking a little giddy.

“We’ll stay close to you, then,” Sora says. “If more show up, don’t let them get close to you.”

Ariel nods. “Understood.”

She leads Sora and the others through a series of rocky canyons, darting quickly across open spaces. The few Heartless that spot them quickly lose track of them and never get close enough to be worth fighting.

Sora falls in next to Kairi and gives her a nudge. She glances over at him, mildly annoyed. He raises his eyebrows and jerks his head toward Ariel with a smug grin.

Kairi shoves him away, flushing pink. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You  _ mimed _ it, that counts.”

“Does not.”

“Does too.”

“Stay focused,” Donald chastises. “We have a mission, remember?”

“Yeah, stay focused, Kairi.” Sora swims out of reach before she can shove him again. Donald is right, though; if there are Heartless here, then the world’s Keyhole is in danger.

It doesn’t occur to any of them that the Heartless weren’t actually trying to chase them until after they swim right into the ambush. More of them than Sora has time to count swarm out of holes in the rock and coral, easily surrounding them.

“Up!” Ariel cries, and with a powerful sweep of her tail she sails over the ring of Heartless easily. Sora hurries after her, swiping at a couple of them with the Keyblade as he passes over them.

He and Kairi take turns falling back to skirmish with the Heartless before catching up with the rest of the group. It’s slow going, but they manage to both pick off most of the gang and reach a vast, open area.

“Wow,” Kairi breathes. Sora turns away from the Heartless to see a shining palace, made of some kind of pearly reflective material that catches and magnifies the light around it. Beautiful towers spiral up from the seafloor around a round central compound. And more importantly, it looks empty of Heartless.

The remaining Heartless follow them into the palace. Sora turns around and slows, ready to hold them off some more, when a bolt of searing energy blasts pasts him and vaporizes them instantly.

“That was too close,” a male voice says.

Sora catches up with the others and notices the figure sitting on the throne up ahead.

“As long as I am king, I will not tolerate those creatures inside this palace.” The king rests his large, golden trident against the base of the throne, scowling.

“Daddy!” Ariel swims eagerly up to him, wrapping her arms around him.

“Oh, Ariel.” His fond expression turns stern. “When will you listen? It’s dangerous out there! Those strange creatures are lurking everywhere!”

Ariel recoils, looking away.

Sebastian clears his throat and tries to puff himself up. It doesn’t work very well, because he’s a crab. “Behold!” he announces. “You swim before the ruler of the seas: His Majesty, King Triton!”

King Triton turns his gaze on Sora, and he suddenly has the urge to hide behind something. “And who are they?”

“They helped us fight off the creatures,” Ariel says.

King Triton narrows his eyes. “They don’t look familiar.”

“We’re from another ocean, very far away,” Sora says. It’s… technically true.

“Yup!” Goofy agrees. “We came to find the Keyhole!”

Triton’s expression darkens even further. “The what?”

Donald buries his face in his hands.

“What’s that?” Ariel asks.

“Well, it’s a -”

“There’s no such thing!” King Triton snaps. “Certainly not here.”

Ariel pouts. “But Daddy -”

“Ariel, not another word!” The force of his command makes Sora shiver. “You are not to leave the palace, is that clear?”

Ariel looks like she wants to protest. Instead, she balls up her fists and leaves the way the group had entered. Kairi follows her, throwing a dirty look over her shoulder at King Triton.

“Your Majesty…” Sora starts.

King Triton turns his cold gaze back to him. “Leave us, please.”

Sora follows Kairi out.

“Come with me,” Ariel says when he catches up to the two of them. “I want to show you something.”

“Didn’t your dad just tell you not to leave the palace?” Sora asks.

“So what?” Kairi says. Her arms are crossed, and she has a very familiar steely glint in her eyes. “We’re not gonna let anything happen to her.”

“Besides, we won’t go far,” Ariel adds.

Donald is hissing something to Goofy about  _ maintaining the world order _ . Sora tunes them out and follows Ariel. “Where are we going?”

“My grotto,” she calls over her shoulder.

Ariel leads them through the underwater canyons to a fallen rock on the seafloor. WIth a grunt of effort, she pushes the rock away to reveal a hole. “In here,” she says, disappearing into the shadows.

Sora follows her through the tunnel to see her spinning slowly in the middle of a tall, round chamber. Hundreds of familiar-looking trinkets litter the natural shelves. A picture frame, the photo inside destroyed by the water, sits next to a candelabra and a wooden jewelry box. There’s a carving set into the wall of a trident’s tip.

“Look at all the wonderful things Flounder and I have collected,” Ariel says.

Kairi pokes at a small bell. “Where did you find all of this?”

“Shipwrecks, mostly. I think this is all from the outside world.” A faraway, wistful expression crosses her face. “Someday, I’m going to see what’s out there. I want to see other worlds. Does that sound strange?”

“No,” Sora says. Riku had wanted that too. More than anything. And Sora and Kairi had wanted it with him. “Not at all.”

“We know the feeling,” Kairi says softly.

Ariel smiles. “Hey, why don’t we try looking for that Keyhole you mentioned?”

“What about your dad?”

Her hands curl into fists again. “He treats me like a little girl,” she says. “He never lets me do anything because he’s too focused on keeping me safe. He doesn’t even try to see things the way I do.”

“Then we’ll help you convince him,” Kairi says fiercely.

Ariel shakes her head. “That means a lot, but you saw how suspicious he was. If he won’t listen to me, he won’t listen to strangers who have just showed up.” Her hands relax, and she gives Kairi a shaky smile. “It’s fine. I’m not giving up anytime soon.”

Kairi frowns, then nods. “Let’s look for the Keyhole, then.”

“I have an idea of where to look,” Ariel says. “Follow me!” She’s off again, disappearing through the tunnel. Kairi and Sora share a look and follow after her.

\---

She leads them through a cramped tunnel, with a current that Sora and Kairi have to fight against to make any headway while Ariel seems to have no trouble at all. She grabs each of their hands to give them a little help, and eventually they reach an open area where a sunken ship rests on the seafloor.

“I thought the Keyhole sounded like something that might have been from the outside world, so it might be on one of the ships from out there,” Ariel explains. “This is the most recent one.”

Kairi peers into the gloomy interior of the ship through one of the jagged gaps in its hull. Sora swims past her, Keyblade out. It doesn’t seem to be reacting to anything in the ship, and her heart sinks. Still, in Traverse Town they had needed to do all that stuff with the bell first, so she enters the ship and pokes around with her harpoons.

“Hey, there’s something over here!” Sora calls.

Kairi follows his voice to a large room in the stern. A glass window covers the back wall, and under the waterlogged detritus littering the room, something glimmers in the corner.

Something briefly blocks the light filtering in through the window. Kairi doesn’t give it any thought; it was probably just something swimming past above them. She swims forward to look at the glimmer.

The window shatters as something enormous tries to force its way through. Kairi screams and shoots backward as the giant shark writhes in the gap left by the broken window, rows of sharp teeth snapping open and shut as it stares forward with cold, dark eyes. 

Sora lets out a battle cry and charges forward, swinging the Keyblade down onto the shark’s nose. The shark recoils and writhes harder, eventually slipping backward and disappearing into the gloom.

Kairi stares wide-eyed at the recently vacated space, her heart racing. She forces herself to breathe steadily, until her heart doesn’t feel like it’s going to explode out of her chest. “Is it gone?” she asks. At least her voice isn’t shaking.

Sora leans out through the window. “I think so.”

She picks herself up and returns to the corner, keeping a wary eye on the window in case the giant shark comes back. She reaches down into the grimy clutter and lifts out a translucent crystal, carved to look like the tip of a trident.

“Where have I seen that before?” Sora wonders.

Kairi frowns at the trident. King Triton had a trident, but she’d seen something like this more recently than that… “Oh! In Ariel’s grotto!”

Ariel gasps. “You’re right! Let’s go back there!” She swims off eagerly, so fast that even with the favorable current on the return trip they struggle to keep up with her again.

Just outside the entrance to the grotto, a group of Heartless pops up. Kairi surges forward to deflect their first attack, but before she can reach them, Ariel lets out a yell and spins, smacking them with her tail and sending them hurtling across the grotto.

Sora charges at them from the side, swinging the Keyblade in wide arcs. Kairi casts Blizzard - and gasps as ice flares out from her fingertips, impossibly fast and impossibly far. The ice completely consumes the group of Heartless and almost catches Sora, who has to swim up out of the way of the spreading spell. Casting it underwater must have given it a lot more material to freeze.

With the Heartless frozen, it’s all too easy to get rid of them; one hit shatters each one into pieces. Kairi goes to town with her daggers, meeting Sora in the middle of a cloud of shattered Heartless.

“Let’s go, before more show up,” Ariel says. She pulls aside the boulder, and Sora and Kairi follow her into the grotto.

The trident-shaped carving in the stone seems obvious now; Kairi pushes the crystal trident gently into place. Nothing seems to happen; the trident shines a little brighter, maybe, but no keyhole appears in a flash of light.

“Ariel, you’ve disobeyed me again!”

Ariel starts. King Triton emerges from the entrance to the grotto, looking furious. Sebastian scuttles across the floor behind him and hides behind a chest.

“I told you not to leave the palace!” he thunders. He catches sight of the crystal trident and his eyes widen. He raises his own trident and aims it at the crystal, and its tip begins to glow white-hot.

“Daddy, no!” Ariel cries. Sora pulls her out of the way as a familiar beam of light strikes the crystal, shattering it. “How… how could you….”

She flees the grotto, shoulders tight. King Triton turns on Kairi and the others.

“You two are not from another ocean,” he accuses. “You’re from another world, aren’t you?”

“We…”

“Then you must bear the key.”

“How did you know?” Sora asks.

“You may have fooled Ariel, but you can’t fool me. You don’t know your dorsal fins from your tails.”

“We’re not that bad!” Kairi protests.

“What’s more, you must already know that as the key bearer, you must not meddle in the affairs of other worlds. Instead, I find you violating this principle and putting my kingdom in danger!”

“The Heartless did it first!” Sora yells.

“ENOUGH!” King Triton thunders. “I don’t care what you claim. I know the truth: the key bearer only shatters peace and brings ruin.”

“We came here to  _ HELP _ !” Kairi shouts. If he’s not going to listen, she’ll just have to talk louder. She rises in the water to look him in the eye, even as tears start to sting in the corners of her own eyes. “The Heartless are the ones who bring ruin! They took our world, and they’re going to take yours if they find the Keyhole before we do! It doesn’t matter if you have some crown and a fancy magic trident, you can’t just solve all your problems by shouting them into submission! Not the Heartless, and not Ariel either!”

“Kairi -” Sora starts. She cuts him off with a sharp jerk of her hand.

King Triton’s eyes burn with fury. “How dare you!?” he blusters. “What would you know about what’s best for Ariel?”

“Because I’m a teenage girl! Did your parents keep you stuck at home and not let you experience the world for yourself? How can you expect her to grow up when you treat her like a little kid who can’t do anything on her own!? She doesn’t listen to you because  _ you don’t listen to her! _ ” She realizes distantly that her hands have curled into trembling fists, her nails digging into her palms.

King Triton raises his trident, pointing it directly at her. A hand - Sora’s - falls on her shoulder, trying to pull her away, but she stays where she is.

“If I’m wrong, go ahead,” she says. “But if I’m right, and you realize that somewhere in your heart, then hear us out.”

The king’s face twists. For what feels like an eternity, nothing moves as Kairi stares him down.

Finally, he sighs. “You have some nerve, speaking to me like that.” The trident lowers. “But… you may be right. I just want to keep her  _ safe. _ ”

“You could try talking to her as a parent, and not as a king,” Sora says.

“I… suppose,” the king says slowly. “Very well. I shall hear you out.”

“The Heartless are invading other worlds, apparently under the orders of someone named Maleficent,” Kairi explains. “They always seek out the Keyhole, and if they find it, they destroy the world from the inside. She’s been recruiting people on these worlds too, letting them command the Heartless and do her dirty work for her. We’ve already stopped one of these people.”

“What sort of people?”

Sora shrugs. “Vindictive. Sleazy. Hungry for power and willing to do anything to get it.”

The king looks thoughtful.

“Your majesty,” Sebastian pipes up. “Do you think Ursula could be in league with this Maleficent?”

“Ursula?” Kairi asks.

“A sea witch,” King Triton says. “She was exiled from the palace for stirring up trouble of exactly the kind you described. And earlier, Sebastian claimed the Heartless, as you call them, were coming from her lair.”

Kairi slams her fist into her palm. “Then she must be working with Maleficent!”

“We have to stop her!” Sora says.

“Return with me to the palace,” King Triton tells them. “We can discuss this further there.”

As they follow King Triton to the palace, Donald pulls Kairi back slightly.

“That was very risky,” he admonishes.

“I know,” she says. “I just… got so mad. For our sake and Ariel’s.”

“It worked out, didn’t it?” Goofy says.

“Maybe yell at someone who doesn’t have a scary magic laser trident next time, though,” Sora adds.

“Okay, I get it! Jeez.”

The entrance to the palace is quiet, but a pit in Kairi’s stomach grows wider with every push forward. She nudges Sora to get his attention.

“What?”

“I’m getting another bad feeling.”

His eyes widen. “Your majesty?” he calls. King Triton looks back at them. “There might be something bad up ahead.”

King Triton frowns and swims faster.

As they approach the throne room, a woman’s hoarse voice drifts through the water. “It should BE here!”

“Ursula,” King Triton growls, and with another burst of speed, he enters the throne room with Sora and Kairi hot on his tail. “You dare show your face here again?” he thunders, raising his trident.

The owner of the voice turns. She - Kairi assumes this is Ursula - has a cloud of wild white hair, purple skin, and the lower half of a black octopus. She grins widely, and the expression sends a shiver down Kairi’s spine. “Oh, I dare, Triton,” she purrs. “And not only that, I had help.” She waves her arm, and Kairi notices Ariel cowering behind the throne.

“Ariel?” King Triton asks. The trident lowers.

“Get him!” Ursula shouts.

A pair of eels streak down from the ceiling and ram into King Triton. The trident flies out of his hand, spinning across the throne room. The eels shift their attention, and Kairi lunges for the trident. She catches it in both hands and swings it at the eels, sending them flying back.

In an instant, Ursula is looming in front of her. One hand strikes, snakelike, and wraps around Kairi’s neck. She cries out, but only tightens her grip on the trident. “Shall we find out whose grip is stronger, little girl?” she hisses. Kairi glares at her and to her surprise, Ursula’s eyes widen. “Oh.” She chuckles darkly. Her hand tightens, cutting off Kairi’s air. “ _ Well, _ isn’t this a gift. The hag is spending all her time looking for that princess, and she waltzes right into my arms.” 

“What?” Kairi wheezes. Despite her best efforts, her grip on the trident is loosening as fuzzy spots appear in her vision.

Ursula seems to have completely forgotten about Kairi, except for her grip tightening further and further. “Ha! It’ll serve her right, and she’ll HAVE to do something to repay -”

Kairi hears a yell just before Ursula is cut off as something hits her. The pressure on Kairi’s neck disappears, and she immediately sinks downward, coughing and gasping for breath.

“- okay? Hey! Kairi!”

Someone shakes her shoulders, and when her vision clears she sees Sora way too close to her face. She shakes her head and pushes him back. “I’m okay,” she says, and then she realizes her hands are empty. “No! Where’s -”

Ursula cackles, holding up the trident in one hand. The two eels curl around her, hissing out quiet, raspy laughs. “At last!” she cries. “And now for that other matter…” She points the trident right at Kairi. Sora plants himself between her and Ursula, Keyblade at the ready.

The trident glows white-hot and releases a beam of energy - and King Triton dives in front of the blast.

“Daddy, no!” Ariel screams. King Triton sinks downward, barely conscious. “Ursula, stop this!”

“What’s the matter, Ariel? Aren’t you tired of following dear daddy’s orders?” Ursula brandishes the trident, apparently still riding the rush of power. “We did have a deal, didn’t we? It’s time for a little journey - to the dark world of the Heartless.” She raises the trident again.

Kairi moves in front of Ariel, staring Ursula down. Sora, Donald, and Goofy fall into a line around her. Ursula cackles. “You think your pathetic little shield is going to stop me!?”

“We cannot find the Keyhole,” one of the eels rasps.

“The Keyhole is not here,” says the other one.

“What?” Ursula demands. “Then where is it!?”

“We do not know,” the eels chorus.

Ursula snarls and looks over the group defending Ariel. “Well, no matter,” she huffs. “I still have my trident. Everything else will be child’s play.” She disappears in a cloud of dark ink, taking the eels and the trident with her.

Sora and Kairi dive down to help Ariel with King Triton. Together, the three of them manage to lift him onto his throne, and Ariel throws her arms around his neck. “I’m so sorry,” she sobs. “I never should have listened to her.”

“I think I should apologize to you,” King Triton says weakly. “I only saw my youngest daughter, never the brave young woman you’ve become.” He cups her cheek with his hand. “I didn’t listen to you when I should have.” He turns to Kairi and the others. “You must get the trident back.”

“What about you?” Ariel asks.

“I will be fine. For whatever reason, she must have intended to capture Kairi alive.”

Kairi squirms as all the eyes in the throne room turn to her. “We’ll come back with the trident, your majesty.”

King Triton nods.

“I’m coming with you,” Ariel says. She hesitates and looks back at the king.

“Go,” King Triton says.

Ariel nods tearfully and hurries to catch up. “You didn’t say you were a princess too,” she tells Kairi.

“Huh?”

“Didn’t Ursula say that?”

Kairi frowns. “She did, but I have no idea what she was talking about. I’m no princess.”

“But… what if you were?” Sora says thoughtfully. “You did say you don’t remember where you came from before you arrived on the islands.”

“I think I would remember being a  _ princess, _ Sora.”

“You never know!”

“Shh,” Ariel says suddenly. “We’re here.”

The water around them is dark, with most of the light coming from glowing holes in the seafloor. It looks like the holes are heating the water around them; Kairi tries to put her hand over one and has to pull back almost immediately from the heat. Directly ahead of them, lit from below by the ominous red light, is a giant skeleton. Its mouth gapes wide open, and it’s this that Ariel leads them up to.

“The trident will have made her very powerful,” Ariel whispers. “Whatever happens, you have to make her drop it.”

“Got it,” Sora says.

The inside of the skeleton is dark and foreboding. Thousands of little polyps with sad eyes look up at them from the floor. Kairi’s hand drifts too low and a cluster of them latch onto her wrist. She yelps and yanks it away, and there’s a soft sound almost like a sigh. She shakes her hand, unnerved, and hurries after Ariel and the others.

The chamber they emerge into is round and cavernous, with a cauldron in the center and a soft seat in front of a mirror on one wall. High up on the opposite wall is some sort of shell, with Ursula lurking just inside.

“Come out and face us!” Donald shouts. “You can’t run!”

“Your time has come!” Sebastian hollers.

Ursula doesn’t respond other than to emerge from the shell and sneer at them. Donald and Sebastian shrink away.

Kairi rolls her eyes. “It’s over, Ursula!” she yells.

Ursula laughs. “Of course it is,” she says. “ _ For you. _ ” She snaps her fingers, and a rough cage made of coral drops down around them. There’s no lock or door, just bars and a solid top. Sora immediately summons the Keyblade and starts hacking at the coral bars. “Don’t bother! I made sure myself those bars are harder than stone. Even if you do manage to escape, it will be far too late.” Still laughing, she retreats back the way she had come.

Sora hits the bars again and yells. “What now?”

“Any ideas, Ariel?” Kairi asks, turning around. “Wha - Ariel? How did you get out?”

Ariel is  _ outside of the cage. _ “I was never inside it in the first place,” she says sheepishly. “I was embarrassed about falling for her tricks before, so I stayed too far back to be caught in it.”

Kairi sighs, relieved. “Is there anything you can do to get us out? You might be our only hope.”

Ariel frowns. “I don’t know…” She spins around the room. “Oh! The cauldron!”

“What about it?” Goofy asks.

“I might be able to make something corrosive enough to melt the cage!”

Ariel swims back and forth, muttering to herself and picking up bowls and jars scattered across the lair. She brings about half of them over to the cauldron and drops some of their contents in, changing the color of the viscous liquid inside.

“Hurry, Ariel!” Sebastian urges. “With every moment Ursula is getting further away with the trident!”

“I know!” Ariel says. She drops one more ingredient, a wicked-looking tooth, and the potion turns a poisonous green. “There!” She dips a bottle into the potion and withdraws it; even as she carries it over it’s already being eaten away by the potion inside. “Everyone stay back.”

Kairi backs away from the bars, and Ariel pours out the potion onto a few of the bars. It eats away slowly at the coral - whatever Ursula had done to it must have made it difficult to dissolve. Eventually, though, a gap forms that’s big enough to swim through, and Ariel drops the melting bottle.

“Where would Ursula have gone?” Sora asks.

“I don’t know,” Ariel says. “Maybe back to the palace. We could probably catch up to her if we hurry.”

“Lead the way!” Kairi says.

They don’t get far from the lair before Donald lets out a screech. “WAIT!”

Ariel stops and turns around. “What is it?”

Donald points off to the left. “I saw one of those eels disappear over there!”

“If they’re with Ursula, then she must be over there too,” Kairi says.

“But what could be over there that she wants?” Sora asks.

Ariel hums. “The only thing in that direction is a steep drop-off. This just means we have to stop her before she does something we’re not expecting.” And with that she takes off again, still swimming almost too fast for the others to keep up.

It doesn’t take long for Kairi to spot Ursula’s retreating back, and she feels a surge of relief. If Donald hadn’t spotted the eels, she might have gotten away.

“You will not go further.”

Speak of the devil. As if thinking about them had summoned them, the eels dart in front of Ariel, blocking the way forward. Ursula starts to fade into the dark water again.

Donald casts Blizzard, and a wave of ice immobilizes the eels. “We’ll take care of them,” he says. “You three keep going!”

Sora nods. “Thanks!” He, Ariel, and Kairi swim over the frozen eels and resume their chase.

“URSULA!” Ariel shouts, surprisingly loud. She looks  _ pissed. _

Ursula whirls around. “What are you DOING here?”

“You should have made sure you had everyone in your cage,” Ariel says. “I’m here for my father’s trident.”

Kairi has to wonder where all that steel came from. Ariel had just admitted Ursula had scared her in her lair, and now this?

Ursula just laughs. “You pathetic fools! I am the ruler of the seas now!” She raises the trident - and starts  _ growing. _ Kairi pulls Sora and Ariel away and can only watch as Ursula towers above them, easily the size of a building.

“Why is everything we have to fight so  _ huge _ ?” Sora complains. “Just once, I want to fight something my size!”

“Knowing our luck, it would move too fast to hit,” Kairi says.

“What do we do?” Ariel asks.

One of Ursula’s enormous tentacles lashes out, and the three scatter to avoid it.

“We need to get the trident away from her,” Sora says. “I can keep her distracted. You guys get to her hand while she’s not looking and make her drop the trident. Ariel, can you use it the way she and the king can?”

“I don’t know,” Ariel says. “I can try.”

“If you can, it might have enough power to take her down.”

“I should be the one distracting her,” Kairi says.

“Huh?”

“With what she said in the palace, she apparently wants me for something. She’ll keep her attention on me, so I should do it.”

Another tentacle lashes out, followed by a beam from the trident.

“Okay,” Sora says when they regroup again. “Let’s go before she gets lucky and hits us.”

He and Ariel disappear into the murky water. Kairi summons the Keyblade, takes a deep breath, and begins her ascent. At least unlike before she doesn’t have to deal with being too short to reach the face.

“Hey, Ursula!” she shouts, unleashing a fireball. Surprisingly, it doesn’t immediately go out on contact with the water. It hits Ursula’s chin, and she focuses on Kairi. “You’ve got a pretty bad track record with capturing me! You should probably just give up!”

Ursula’s eyes burn. “You-!” She reaches out with her free hand and Kairi darts away, circling back around and smacking her with the Keyblade. As she does, she notices how Ursula is holding the trident: low and at her side. If Sora and Ariel are going to strike, she should do it now.

“Zero for three!” she taunts. Someday yelling insults at people who want to kill her is going to backfire. Hopefully that day isn’t today. “Are you even trying?”

The sea witch bellows wordlessly and swipes for her again. Kairi ducks under it, only to see Ursula exhale a blast of fire. She dives down, feeling the searing heat on her tail. Come on, any minute now would be great…

The Keyblade disappears from her hands. Then she hears a crackle, and Ursula  _ screams _ as electricity courses up her arm. A few moments later she sees Sora and Ariel swimming up from below. Sora is holding the Keyblade. Ariel is holding the trident.

“No!” Ursula bellows. Whatever she had done to make herself bigger is reversing without the trident; she’s gradually shrinking even as she recovers from the shock.

Ariel raises the trident, screwing her face up with effort. The tip glows, brighter and brighter until Kairi almost can’t bear to look at it. The trident releases a blast stronger than any Kairi had seen, and the force of it pushes Ariel backward. When it hits Ursula it explodes into a brilliant light, temporarily blinding Kairi. When her vision clears, Ursula has vanished.

There’s silence for a few moments before Sora speaks. “Is she  _ dead? _ ”

Ariel hugs the trident to her chest, breathing hard. “I… I don’t know.”

“Sora! Kairi!” Donald and Goofy emerge from the darkness, with Sebastian clinging to Goofy’s shell.

“Where’s Ursula?” Goofy asks. “We took care of the eels, so we got over here as fast as we could.”

“She’s gone,” Ariel says. “It’s over.”

-

“I can’t thank you enough for recovering my trident,” King Triton says. “And I believe I owe all of you an apology for my harsh words.”

“Aww, you were just tryin’ to protect your kingdom,” Goofy says. “No hard feelings.”

King Triton shakes his head. “I let old stories and my own misgivings dictate my treatment of you, rather than your actions. I refused to listen to Ariel, and in desperation she turned to the very forces I was trying to protect her from. And when you found that crystal, I lost my temper and destroyed it.”

“Oh yeah, the crystal!” Sora says. “Why did you destroy it?”

“That crystal had the power to reveal the Keyhole. I believed I had to keep you away from it at any cost.”

“What!?”

“I have one last request of you: I want you to seal the Keyhole. My trident is also capable of revealing it.”

“Where is it?” Ariel asks.

King Triton smiles. “If anyone could have figured it out, I thought it would be you. It’s in your grotto.”

-

Ariel takes a deep breath, holding the trident up with both hands. It begins glowing softly, and the carving on the wall glows in response. At the spot where the two lights overlap, a shimmering barrier appears with the Keyhole in the center.

Sora raises the Keyblade. Its tip glows to match the combined light hitting the Keyhole, and the thin beam fires into it. The Keyhole locks with an echoing click, and both it and the barrier dissolve into a stream of bubbles and sparks of light.

“Sora, Kairi…” Ariel says softly. “What’s your world like?”

Kairi looks over at Sora, and he nods. “It’s a little chain of islands in a big ocean,” he says. “We’ve been looking for our friend, Riku. He… he always said it felt too small. He wanted to see what else was out there.”

“Sorry for lying to you earlier,” Kairi adds.

Ariel shakes her head. “It’s okay. You needed to keep it a secret, right?”

“They’re  _ supposed _ to,” Donald says pointedly.

“If you can travel to other worlds, maybe I can, too.” Ariel looks up at the light filtering through the hole in the grotto’s ceiling. “There’s so many places I want to see… I know I’ll get there someday.”

_ We’ll never know what’s out there by staying here. If there are other worlds, then ours is just a little piece of something much greater. _

When had Riku’s fascination with other worlds started? He had said it was because of her arrival, but she didn’t remember him talking about it as much when they were just kids. Had something happened to make him think about it again?

The question settles into her chest with an echo of the feeling she’s long since associated with Heartless. She can only hope she and Sora find him soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was NOT supposed to have a three month hiatus OOPS. Have a slightly longer than normal chapter and the promise that I will absolutely not abandon this fic no matter what distractions come up. This time it was a combination of school and kh3 + the resulting fandom activity spawning about ten new fic ideas.
> 
> The beginning of the chapter has another one of my headcanons for how magic works in KH. Not everyone with an affinity for a type of magic specializes in that magic, and not everyone who specializes in a type of magic has an affinity for it. I don't have it worked out yet, because that's not until later and really not too important in the long run, but not everyone in the Organization has an affinity for the element they're associated with. Some do, but not all of them.
> 
> I also made a kh sideblog, [right over here!](https://sorikaimutual.tumblr.com/) I've been putting up any and all kh content there, including updates on the writing process. I don't plan on not updating for three months again so we'll just see how it goes.
> 
> Next time: A confrontation, and an uncomfortable realization.


End file.
